My TN Connection

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a popular protocol for network management. It is used for collecting information from and configuring network devices such as servers, printers, hubs, switches, and routers on an Internet Protocol (IP) network.

Large networks with hundreds or even thousands of nodes are difficult to manage without a large staff to monitor every computer. SNMP, which is widely used in local area networks (LANs), lets you monitor network nodes from a management host. You can monitor network devices such as LAN switches, routers, servers, workstations, even printers. continue »

Network administrators may wish to manage multiple Ethernet switches via a single IP address.  The reasoning for this is if they have a rack of switches and don’t want to remember multiple IP addresses or if they need to reduce the number of IP addresses for devices that are being deployed in their network.

While there is no standard for managing multiple Ethernet switches via a single IP address most manufactures do offer managed switches with this capability.   Some of the names you may see and hear for this concept are Switch Clustering, IP Stacking and Virtual Stack Management to name a few.  The concept is the same across the various manufactures, but it may be implemented in a different manner so you can not manage multiple vendors’ switches via a single IP address since this is not an IEEE standard and each manufacture implements this in a proprietary manner. continue »

The term ‘media conversion’ can be easily misinterpreted by those who are unfamiliar with data networking technology and the wide range of hardware equipment and software programs that support computer networks. Alternate meanings can be applied to each of the words which make up the term, and as a result, media conversion is used to reference a wide variety of technology based equipment and/or software.

This particular article will simply define the meaning of the term ‘media conversion’ as it relates to the data networking industry and the transfer of data on a computer network. continue »