Nov
27
2007
It always helps me to think of the English translation when trying to memorize and understand some the Cisco IOS settings I think are important.
Here are some Cisco IOS switchport configurations translated into English:
‘switchport mode trunk‘ says: “Always trunk on this end, and I will send DTP to attempt to negotiate a trunk on the [...]
Tags: DTP
Nov
27
2007
IEEE 802.1Q (sometimes referred to as 1Q or DOT1Q) is a industry standards based implementation of carring traffic for multiple VLANs on a single trunking interface between two Ethernet switches. 802.1Q is for Ethernet networks only.
Unlike ISL , 802.1Q does not encapsulate the original Ethernet frame.
For Ethernet V2 frames, 802.1Q inserts a new 4-byte [...]
Tags: 802.1q
Nov
26
2007
Inter-Switch Link (ISL) is a Cisco specific implementation of trunking multiple VLANs between two Cisco switches where a single interface will carry traffic for more than one VLAN. ISL was designed to work with Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, and ATM.
ISL completely encapsulates the original Ethernet frame by adding a new 26 byte header and [...]
Tags: ISL
Nov
21
2007
Some notes about VTP (VLAN Trunking Protocol):
Cisco switches running Cisco IOS store VTP and VLAN information in a separate database stored in Flash, in file called vlan.dat.
Cisco switches running CatOS store VTP and VLAN information in the main switch configuration file, stored in NVRAM.
VTP information is only transmitted over trunk ports.
A VTP client does not [...]
Tags: VTP
Nov
21
2007
Just like there are 3 different Ethernet header types, there are also 3 different types of Ethernet addresses:
Unicast
Broadcast
Multicast
A unicast frame contains the unique MAC address of the destination receiver. A broadcast frame contains all binary 1’s as the destination address (FFFF.FFFF.FFFF). A multicast frame contains the unique multicast MAC address of an application, [...]