Security

   ‧In some networks, it is important to segregate some departments from others. For instance, you may not want your accounting department accessible 

       from your operations department. Also, if you have a guest network, you may want them to be able to access the Internet, but not the intranet. With the

       managed switch, you could disable the port, limit the port, or change the functionality of certain ports.

  Load-sharing

   ‧A numbers of end-users can access shared resources such as file servers or database storage, the connection to the server or storage device will

       not become a bottleneck.

  Flexible Network Connectivity

   ‧The managed tools can get much more data, while using less network bandwidth, will either manage every device or just the more critical areas.

  Quality of Service

   ‧It provides four internal queues to support four different classifications of traffic. High priority packet streams experience less delay inside the switch,

       which supports lower latency for certain delay-sensitive traffic.

   ‧The QoS operate at full wire speed. The actual scheduling at each egress port can be based upon a strict priority, weighted round robin or a mix of both.

   ‧The VLAN feature in the switch offers the benefits of both security and performance. VLAN is used to isolate traffic between different users and thus 

       provides better security. Limiting the broadcast traffic to within the same VLAN broadcast domain also enhances performance. Q-in-Q, the use of double

       VLAN tags is an efficient method for enabling Subscriber Aggregation.

   ‧802.1x features enable user authentication for each network access attempt. Port security features allow you to limit the number of MAC addresses per  

       port in order to control the number of stations for each port. Static MAC addresses can be defined for each port to ensure only registered machines are

       allowed to access. By enabling both of these features, you can establish an access mechanism based on user and machine identities, as well as

       control the number of access stations.

   ‧The SP1684A/SP1678A RJ45 ports can be combined together to create a multi-link load-sharing trunk. All traffic is aggregated based on MAC  high full-

       addresses, thus balancing the traffic load. The switch supports up to 8 trunk groups. Port trunks are useful for switch-to-switch cascading, providing very

       duplex speeds.

  Flexible Network Connectivity

    ‧SP1684A and SP1678A, with dual media ports, are provided for flexible fiber connection. You can select to install optional transceiver modules in these 

        slots for short, medium or long distance fiber backbone attachment. Use of the SFP/GBIC will disable their corresponding built-in 10/100/1000Base-T

        connections.

   ‧Network management is available through an embedded RMON and command line interface, or via an SNMP management station. Administrators can

       now keep watch over network conditions, either locally or remotely, and manage them via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol).

  Quality of Service

   ‧CoS technology is simpler to manage and more scalable as a network grows in structure and traffic volume. You can take CoS as advanced traffic

       control, and QoS as professional traffic control.

   ‧802.1p Layer 2 Tagging and ToS make use of three bits in the layer 2 packet header that can be used to specify priority. Since three bits does not allow 

       for much sophistication in managing traffic, a new protocol, Differentiated Services (DS or DiffServ), has been developed in draft form by an IETF Working

      Group. Differentiated Services uses a different approach to managing packets than simple priority labeling.