THE LEWIS COLLEGE

COLLEGE OF COMPUTER STUDIES

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In the first video was the discussion of the switch interfaces.

And the first topic was the comparison between routers and switches, compare a switch with a lot
of interfaces that we can connect end hosts from using rj45 connectors compared to routers which
has limited interfaces that we can connect from.

And then after that we have discussed about the configuration of switch interfaces. Interface is a
term to refer to physical ports on a network device used to forward data to and from other devices.
Each of the interfaces can be configured with several settings each of which may differ from
interface to interface, IRS users interface subcommands to configure these settings.

Let’s begin with a discussion of 3 basic port interface settings the Port speed, Duplex and
Description.

Port speed – is the rate of the interface usually listed in Mbps common ethernet speed include
10/100/1000 mbps.

Duplex – refers to how data flows on the interface. On a half-duplex interface data can be only be
transferred to the receiver at any given time a Full-duplex on the other hand can send and receive
data simultaneously.

Description – lets you add a text description in an interface. It is meant to provide a reminder in
the configuration to describe what certain interfaces are used for. It is a text description configured
by the administrator.
The show interfaces status command lists much of the detail configured even with only one line
of output per interface.

Configuring Multiple Interfaces with the interface range Command to shorten your configuration
work when making the same setting on multiple consecutive interfaces. To do so, use the interface
range command. For example, for interfaces from 11 till 20 end users will be connected.

WHAT IS ETHERNET AUTO-NEGOTIATION?

Auto-negotiation is the feature that allows a port on a switch, router, server, or other device to
communicate with the device on the other end of the link to determine the optimal duplex mode
and speed for the connection. For any 10/100 or 10/100/1000 interfaces Cisco Catalyst switches
default to a setting of duplex auto and speed auto. As a result, those interfaces attempt to
automatically determine the speed and duplex setting to use. Alternatively, you can configure
most devices, switch interfaces included, to use a specific speed and/or duplex. Ethernet devices
on the ends of a link must use the same standard; otherwise, they cannot correctly send data.
For example, a NIC cannot use 100BASE-T, which uses a UTP cable with a 100-Mbps speed,
while the switch port on the other end of the link uses 1000BASE-T. the link would not work with
one end trying to send at 100 Mbps while the other tried to receive the data at 1000 Mbps.

The IEEE auto-negotiation (802.3u) protocol helps makes it much easier to operate a LAN when
NICs and switch ports support multiple speeds. IEEE auto-negotiation defines a protocol that lets
the two UTP-based Ethernet nodes on a link negotiate so that they each choose to use the same
speed and duplex settings.