Wgsw1602.GIF (6780 bytes)PLANET Web Switch Family

Web / SNMP Intelligent Products

WGSW-1602

16-Port Fast Ethernet Switch with 2 GbE slots


Chapter 4 Console Interface

The console, using VT100 terminal emulation, can be accessed from the RS232 serial port or a telnet connection. The switch offers password protection for this interface. All of the following examples of the Console’s User Interface show a screen capture from a telnet session.

When attached to the User Interface via a Telnet Session, the following must be set in order to use the arrow keys: Under the terminal pull down menu choose Properties and make sure the VT100 Arrows option is turned on.

4.1 User Interface

The switch offers a menu-driven interface. The initial welcome screen, seen below in Figure 4-1, requires a password entry in order to proceed. If there is no password set on the system, the Main Menu will be displayed and access is granted immediately. By default, password protection is disabled. If enabled, the default password is “switch”.

To enable password protection

Figure 4-1 Initial Welcome screen of User Interface


4.2   Characteristics

There are several characteristics to the User Interface pages that are necessary to know before proceeding to use it. The arrow and Tab keys may be used to move within menus and sub-screens. Besides, there isa characteristic prior to each menu(a, b, c...) which can also be used to enter sub-screens. At the bottom of every screen are some key commands available to the user for that particular screen, as well as some helpful information. The common key strokes and their definitions are listed below:

ESC

Return to the previous menu or screen, or abort editing

Ctrl-L

Refresh the screen

Ctrl-D

Log off

Ctrl-W

Saves current configuration to NVRAM.

Spacebar

Toggles between possible settings for a field.

Enter

Select a menu item, edit a field, or accept a value after editing a field.

Ctrl-X Delete a table entry

Tab

Move to next menu


4.3 Main Menu

The main menu displays all the sub-menus that are available. Striking Enter, at a highlighted option, will confirm the choice of the specified sub-menu. As shown in Figure 4-2, there are ten menu items to choose from:

To logout of the user interface, hit Ctrl-D at anytime during your telnet session. You will be brought back to the login screen.

Figure 4-2: Main Menu

4.3.1. System Manager

This menu contains system parameters needed to configure the switch to your network. Menu items are:

Figure 4-3: System Manager

4.3.1.1 General Info

This screen displays the following:

The users can define the "System Name", "System Contact" and "System Location".

Figure 4-4 : System Manager/General Info

4.3.1.2 IP Settings

This menu manages the IP related information of the system.

Figure 4-5: System Manager/IP Settings

4.3.1.3 Security Administration

This screen allows the user to enable/disable the Web Access and Password Protection. It also allows the user to change the password for both the Console and Web sessions.

Figure 4-6 System Manager/ Security Admin

4.3.1.4 NVRAM Admin

a. Save Configuration to NVRAM : Save all changed made in your session to NVRAM.

b. Restore Defaults : Restore original settings.

Figure 4-7 System Manager/NURAM Admin

4.3.1.5 Firmware Upgrade

This screen allows users to select an image file and the location from where it can be downloaded using TFTP. There are three "Boot from:" options: Net, Net & Save, and Last Saved. (Please refer to Chapter 5 when updating software)

Net option:

This option allows the user to try out a new image before upgrading. It requires a TFTP filename and a server IP address to retrieve the specified image from the given IP address.

The new image will not overwrite the one in the flash.

Net & Save option

This option requires the same setup as the Net option, i.e. TFTP server and a new image. However, it copies the image to the flash directly and the system boots from the flash afterwards.

Last Saved option

This option will automatically show up after the "Net & Save" option is selected and the unit is reset.

Warning: The previous image in the flash will be lost when the procedure completes.

Figure 4-8: System Manager/Firmware Upgrade

4.3.1.6 Reset

Figure 4-9: System Manager Reset

4.3.2 Port Manager

This menu contains two items for port management:

Figure 4-10: Port Manager

4.3.2.1 All Ports

Port Configuration, users can arrange the port characteristics related to link operations. All of the parameters on this page are toggle settings. To switch or toggle between selections simply strike the space bar.

Link and State field

Display the Link status. Those two fields can not be changed..

Admin field

Allows Administrator to Enable or Disable the port.

Auto-Neg field

Enable or Disable the port's Auto-Negotiation.

DataRate field

The choices are 10Mbps, 100Mbps, and Auto (Auto-negotiate with the speed of the attached device). This function is available when Auto-Negotiation is disabled.

Duplex field

Offers the choice of Full, Half, or Auto (will auto-detect the value of the attached device and set the port duplex accordingly). This function is available when Auto-Negotiation is disabled.

Flow Control field

Flow control stops the sender from sending data until the receiver can accept it.

Comments field

This field is for user to add comments for this port.

Figure 4-11: Port Manager:/ All Ports

4.3.2.2 Port Specific

Port Configuration

The upper half of this screen shows the current status for the following parameters:

The lower half of the screen will allow you to make changes to the port settings. Most of the settings is the same as previous section except the following:

Source Security field

When enabled, Source Security allows the administrator to specify which workstations on that port will be allowed to send packets into the switch. Only workstations, whose MAC address and switch port number are entered into the Static Bridge Table, will be allowed to send packets into the switch. (Note: The filtering occurs only for packets sent from the "Secured" ports to other ports. All packets sent from other ports to the "Secured" port will be sent without any filtering).

HOL Prevention field

Use this function to prevent Head-of-LIne Blocking problem.If this option is enabled it prevents the forwarding of data to a port that is busy. Normally, when the switch sends traffic to a port it goes to the port's transmit queue then is sent out. If the port's transmit queue is already busy trying to send out data then the switch will place the waiting traffic in the buffer memory until the port is ready to send it out. However, if the port's transmit queue remains full, the switch will fill up more of the buffer with traffic waiting to be sent on that port. HOL blocking prevention works on the assumption that it is better to drop the traffic waiting in the buffer than to continue using more memory and impacting performance across all the ports.

Port VLAN ID field

Select the VLAN ID that this port belongs to..

Figure 4-12: Port Manager / Port Specific

4.3.3 Address Manager

This menu contains two items for MAC address management:

4.3.3.1 Static Addresses

The Static Addresses allows the administrator to specify Media Access Control (MAC) addresses for specific ports that will not be purged from the bridge table by the aging function.

Add an entry

If all the information is correct, the new entry will appear in the list below, which is in order by port ID. Otherwise, an error message will be displayed and the cursor will return to the MAC Address field.

Remove an entry

Figure 4-13: Address Manager / Static Addresses

4.3.3.2 Address Aging

The aging time is the amount of time that an entry is kept in the MAC addresses tables prior to being purged (or aged). The range (in parentheses) represents the minimum and the maximum values that the timer can be set.

Figure 4-14: Address Manager / Address Ageing

4.3.4 Spanning Tree

This menu contains two items about Spanning Tree configuration:

4.3.4.1 Bridge Settings

Spanning Tree can be enabled or disabled in this screen.

Enable: There are four other tunable parameters to be addressed.

Disable: Disable spanning tree algorithm on the system.

Figure 4-15: Spanning Tree: / Bridge Settings

4.3.4.2 Port Settings

For the Port Settings options, you can specify spanning tree parameters for each port. These parameters include port priority and path cost.

Figure 4-16: Spanning Tree: / Port Settings

4.3.5 VLAN Setup

This menu contains three items about VLAN configuration:

4.3.5.1 VLAN Administration

Up to 16 VLANs with unique ID numbers and names can be added. VLAN ID numbers must be in the range of 1-4094.

Add a VLAN

Remove a port or an entire VLAN

Figure 4-17: VLAN Setup / VLAN Administration

4.3.5.2 VLAN Membership

This matrix allows for real time management of up to 16 VLANs. To add a port to a VLAN, position the cursor in the desired matrix location and toggle the options with the SPACE bar.

A "U" or "T" will be displayed for each port assigned to the VLAN (see Figure 4-18), where "U" stands for untagged and "T" for tagged. A "_" space indicates that the port is not a member of the particular VLAN. VLAN tagging is a standard set by the IEEE to facilitate the spanning of VLANs across multiple switches. (Reference: Appendix A and IEEE Std 802.1Q-1998 Virtual Bridged Local Area Networks)

Figure 4-18 VLAN Setup / VLAN Membership

4.3.5.3 Port VLAN ID Setup

All untagged packets entering the switch will by default be tagged with the ID specified by the port’s PVID. This screen allows you to specify the PVID for each port.

Figure 4-19 VLAN Setup / PVID Settings

4.3.6 Port Trunking

Port Trunking is a feature that allows multiple links between switches to work as one virtual link or aggregate link. Trunks can be defined for similar port types only. For example, a 10/100 port cannot form a Port Trunk with a gigabit port. For 10/100 ports, trunks can only be formed within the same cluster. A cluster is a set of eight ports (maximum) for WGSW-1602. Please be noted, the trunked switch should also support Port Trunking as well, for example another WGSW-1602 or WGSW-801SX with trunking support turned on.

Figure 4-20: Port Trunking

4.3.7 Port Mirroring

This menu option allows users to enable the Port Mirroring capability (see Figure 4-21 and Section 3.11). Users need to specify both the Source and Monitor port. The Monitor port will show a copy of every packet that arrives and departs at the Source port.

Figure 4-21: Port Mirroring

4.3.8 SNMP Management

This sub-menu allows users to setup three sections:

4.3.8.1 Community Table

The administrator can create up to eight different community strings with combinations of GET, SET and TRAP privileges. These community strings need to be set prior to setting host access, as the host table depends on the existence of community strings. The public string has all the privileges by default.

Figure 4-22: SNMP Management / Community Table

4.3.8.2 Host Table

The screen grants a host the access rights to the box.

Host Authorization must be enabled to use the host table. Host Authorization is used as a security feature to limit people who are not listed in the host table from accessing the switch.

If Host Authorization is enabled, the host must be added to this table, through the Console port connection in order for an end station to be access the switch via SNMP or the Web Interface.

Add host

Figure 4-23: SNMP Management / Host Table

 

4.3.8.3 Trap Settings

When on, the system will generate an SNMP trap upon a host authorization failure. This failure occurs when a host tries to gain access to the system but the host's IP is not in the SNMP host table.

Figure 4-24: SNMP Management / Trap Settings

4.3.9 IGMP Management

Multicasting is used to support real-time applications such as video conferencing or streaming audio. A multicast server does not have to establish a separate connection with each client. It merely broadcasts its service to the network, and any hosts which want to receive the multicast register with their local multicast switch/ router. Although this approach reduces the network overhead required by a multicast server, the broadcast traffic must be carefully pruned at every multicast switch/router it passes through to ensure that traffic is only passed on the hosts which subscribed to this service.

This switch uses IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) to monitor network traffic to determine which hosts want to receive multicast traffic. You can use the IGMP Management screen to enable this function.

Figure 4-25: SNMP Management / Trap Settings

4.3.10 Statistics

There are two sections in this screen. The left-side Port-ID field allows users to choose a port to be observed. The central portion of the screen displays the basic statistics associated with the port, which is highlighted at the Port-ID field.

Figure 4-26 Statistics

 


Top of this Chapter] Web Interface Mgt. Table of Content Upgrade

 

Copyright (c) 2001, Planet Technology Corp.
logo-b.gif (2535 bytes)