MVTX2601
Data Sheet
28
Zarlink Semiconductor Inc.
Features of the MVTX2601 that correspond to the requirements of their associated IETF classes are summarized in
the table below.
8.0 Port Trunking
8.1 Features and Restrictions
A port group (i.e., trunk) can include up to 4 physical ports but all of the ports in a group must be in the same
MVTX2601.
Load distribution among the ports in a trunk for unicast is performed using hashing based on source MAC address
and destination MAC address. Three other options include source MAC address only, destination MAC address
only and source port (in bidirectional ring mode only). Load distribution for multicast is performed similarly.
The MVTX2601 also provides a safe fail-over mode for port trunking automatically. If one of the ports in the trunking
group goes down, the MVTX2601 will automatically redistribute the traffic over to the remaining ports in the trunk.
8.2 Unicast Packet Forwarding
The search engine finds the destination MCT entry and if the status field says that the destination port found
belongs to a trunk then the group number is retrieved instead of the port number. In addition, if the source address
belongs to a trunk then the source port’s trunk membership register is checked.
A hash key, based on some combination of the source and destination MAC addresses for the current packet,
selects the appropriate forwarding port.
8.3 Multicast Packet Forwarding
For multicast packet forwarding, the device must determine the proper set of ports from which to transmit the
packet based on the VLAN index and hash key.
Two functions are required in order to distribute multicast packets to the appropriate destination ports in a port
trunking environment.
Determining one forwarding port per group. For multicast packets, all but one port per group, the forwarding port,
must be excluded.
Preventing the multicast packet from looping back to the source trunk.
Network management
(NM) and Expedited
forwarding (EF)
Global buffer reservation for NM and EF
Option of strict priority scheduling
No dropping if admission controlled
Assured forwarding
(AF)
Programmable bandwidth partition, with option of WFQ service
Option of delay-bounded service keeps delay under fixed levels even if not
admission-controlled
Random early discard, with programmable levels
Global buffer reservation for each AF class
Best effort (BE)
Service only when other queues are idle means that QoS not adversely affected
Random early discard, with programmable levels
Traffic from flow control enabled ports automatically classified as BE
Table 9 - MVTX2601 Features Enabling IETF Diffserv Standards