Wired

The Wired view presents the scaffolds associated with configuring the wired distribution layer of your network, and monitoring/configuring the switch ports throughout your infrastructure.

Switches

An entry in the switches scaffold defines a piece of switching equipment with which the rXg will communicate for the purpose of effecting dynamic VLAN changes when necessary due to a policy shift for a device on the network.

When a device's VLAN assignment has changed due to a policy shift, the rXg will connect to the switch associated with the device's RADIUS realm via the protocol specified in the configuration, and force a disconnect/reconnect, which will reinitiate the RADIUS authentication process, thereby resulting in the new VLAN assignment being applied to the client device.

The name field is an arbitrary string descriptor used only for administrative identification. Choose a name that reflects the purpose of the record. This field has no bearing on the configuration or settings determined by this scaffold.

The device section specifies information of equipment being configured. Fields with bold text are required. Choose the appropriate option from the supported device types drop-down menu.

Enabling the Monitoring checkbox results in the rXg attempting to import and synchronize Switch Ports from the device, as well as perform ping monitoring of the switch itself, and collect CPU and Memory statistics, where possible.

The SNMP community field specifies the SNMP community string that will be used when attempting to gather CPU and/or Memory information, as well as to collect Switch Port utilization/error/discard data for graphing.

The Switch Fabric field assigns a switch fabric profile to this switch. The Loopback IP , System name , and SPB-m nickname fields must be provided when assigning a switch fabric profile. After supplying the necessary information, the Config sync status link becomes available in the scaffold.

For switches that support configuration management, the Config sync status column contains a link that allows the operator to access bootstrap instructions and enable synchronization.

When bootstrapping a new switch, the operator may retrieve bootstrap commands that will bring a factory default switch or wireless controller into the necessary state to participate in the fabric network, which may be copy/pasted into a console session on the device.

After initial bootstrapping and network connectivity is established, the operator may download a running configuration backup or compare the current running configuration to the expected configuration, based on the associated configuration elements. If changes are needed, they may be pushed to the switch. After successfully synchronizing manually the first time, future configuration changes will be pushed to the device whenever relevant configuration changes are made in the database.

The note field is a place for the administrator to enter a comment. This field is purely informational and has no bearing on the configuration settings.

Switch Fabric

An entry in the Switch Fabric scaffold defines the fabric area of a 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging-MAC (SPB-m) deployment. All participating fabric switches share the common configuration found here. In addition, each participating fabric switch should have an Infrastructure Device defined with the necessary SPB-m configuration specific to that device.

The Management I-SID field specifies the I-SID that will be associated with the Management VLAN for management traffic. The Management VLAN is configured per device, under the Switches scaffold.

The Manual area field specifies the IS-IS area that will be used within this fabric in the format: xx.xxxx (ex: 10.0001)

The Primary B-VLAN and Secondary B-VLAN fields indicate the VLANs which will be used for passing encapsulated traffic between participating fabric switches on switch ports designated as NNI ports. These VLANs should be unused elsewhere in your infrastructure.

Switch Ports

Entries in the Switch Ports scaffold are created automatically by enabling the Monitoring checkbox on a supported switch's Infrastructure Device. Ports are imported and speed, packet, error and discard rates are gathered via SNMP and made graphable for each switch port.

The name field represents the port's identification in the switch, and should not be changed.

The NNI Port designates this port as a Network-to-Network Interface. This option must be enabled for any port where two fabric-enabled switches interconnect.

The speed in bps field represents the port's maximum physical speed in bits per second.

Switch Port Profiles

Entries in the Switch Port Profiles scaffold define the behavior of downstream wired infrastructure device ports. Switch port profiles enable an operator to manage virtually unlimited switch ports, without configuring them individually.

The Default checkbox, declares the selected switch port profile as the default for any newly imported switches

The Move Ports checkbox, if selected, will move ports associated with a different default profile to a profile upon save. This should be used in conjunction with the Default checkbox.

The Ports field defines individual switch ports to associate with this profile.

The Native VLAN field is used to define the untagged VLAN that ports associated to a profile should use.

The Shutdown checkbox declares ports associated to this profile to be disabled.

The VLANs field defines the VLANs that should be tagged on ports associated with a profile.

The RADIUS drop-down menu can be used to enable 802.1x or MAC Authentication Bypass, on ports associated to a profile.

The native I-SID specifies the network that untagged traffic from this port should be placed into when building a Fabric configuration script.

The NNI Port designates this port as a Network-to-Network Interface. This option must be enabled for any port where two fabric-enabled switches interconnect.