Dell PowerConnect 7048P User Manual - Page 118

Alternatively, network administrators may choose to manage their network via the production network. This is in-band management. Because in-band management traffic is mixed in with production network traffic, it is subject to all of the filtering rules usually applied on a switched/routed port such as ACLs and VLAN tagging. You can assign an IP address to OOB management port and to any VLAN. By default, all ports are members of VLAN 1. If you assign an IP address to VLAN 1, you can connect to the switch management interface by using any of the frontpanel switch ports. Dell recommends that you use the OOB port for remote management. The following list highlights some advantages of using OOB management instead of in-band management: • Traffic on the OOB port is segregated from traffic on the production network, so you can keep the management traffic and network traffic separate. • If the production network is experiencing problems, you can still access the switch management interface and troubleshoot issues. • Because the OOB port is intended to be physically isolated from the production network, configuration options are limited to just those protocols needed to manage the switch. Limiting the configuration options makes it difficult to accidentally cut off management access to the switch. DHCP can be enabled on the OOB interface and all VLAN interfaces simultaneously, or you can configure static information. To configure static address information on the default VLAN, set the IP address and subnet mask on the VLAN interface and configure a global default gateway for the switch. Adjusting the Management Interface MTU When logging in to the PowerConnect switch using TCP, the switch negotiates the TCP Maximum Segment Size (MSS) using the minimum of the requested MSS or the MTU setting of the port. TCP packets are transmitted from the switch with the DF (Don't Fragment) bit set in order to receive notification of fragmentation from any transit routers. Upon receiving an ICMP Destination Unreachable, Fragmentation needed but DF set 118 Setting Basic Network Information