3Com 4210 9-Port - Introduction to Management VLAN; Management VLAN; Static Route; Default Route

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1 Management VLAN Configuration
Introduction to Management VLAN
Management VLAN
To manage an Ethernet switch remotely through Telnet or the built-in Web server, the switch need to be
assigned an IP address, and make sure that a route exists between the user and the switch. As for an
3Com series Layer 2 Ethernet switch, only the management VLAN interface can be assigned an IP
address.
The management VLAN interface of a switch can obtain an IP address in one of the following three
ways:
z Through the command used to configure IP address
z Through BOOTP (In this case, the switch operates as a BOOTP client.)
z Through dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) (In this case, the switch operates as a DHCP
client)
The three ways of obtaining an IP address cannot be configured at the same time. That is, the latest IP
address obtained causes the previously IP address to be released. For example, if you assign an IP
address to a VLAN interface by using the corresponding commands and then apply for another IP
address through BOOTP (using the ip address bootp-alloc command), the former IP address will be
released, and the final IP address of the VLAN interface is the one obtained through BOOTP.
For details of DHCP, refer to the DHCP module.
Static Route
A static route is configured manually by an administrator. You can make a network with relatively simple
topology to operate properly by simply configuring static routes for it. Configuring and using static routes
wisely helps to improve network performance and can guarantee bandwidth for important applications.
The disadvantages of static route lie in that: When a fault occurs or the network topology changes, static
routes may become unreachable, which in turn results in network failures. In this case, manual
configurations are needed to recover the network.
Default Route
The switch uses the default route when it fails to find a matching entry in the routing table:
z If the destination address of a packet fails to match any entry in the routing table, the switch uses
the default route;