Dell PowerConnect 8100 CLI Reference Guide - Page 873

the DCBX conforms to all aspects of the legacy standards to the degree necessary to support interoperability with a wide variety of FCoE capable switches. The main objective of DCBX is to perform the following operations: • Discovery of DCB capability in a peer DCBX is used to learn about the capabilities of the peer device. It is a means to determine if the peer device supports a particular feature such as PFC. • DCB feature misconfiguration detection DCBX can be used to detect misconfiguration of a feature between the peers on a link. Misconfiguration detection is feature-specific because some features may allow asymmetric configuration. • Peer configuration of DCB features DCBX can be used by a device to perform configuration of DCB features in its peer device if the peer device is willing to accept configuration. Interoperability with IEEE DCBX The PowerConnect switch automatically detects if a peer is operating with either of the two CEE DCBX versions or the IEEE standard DCBX version. This is the default mode. DCBX can also be configured to manually select one of the legacy versions or IEEE standard mode. In auto-detect mode, the switch starts operating in IEEE DCBX mode on a port and if it detects a legacy DCBX device based on the OUI of the organization TLV, then the switch changes its DCBX mode on that port to support the version detected. There is no time out mechanism to move back to IEEE mode. Once the DCBX peer times out, multiple peers are detected, the link is reset (link down/up) or as commanded by the operator, DCBX resets its operational mode to IEEE. The interaction between DCBX component and other components remains the same irrespective of the operational mode it is executing. For instance, DCBX component interacts with PFC to get needed information to pack the TLVs to be sent out on the interface. Based on the operational control mode of the port, DCBX packs it in the proper frame format. Data Center Bridging Commands 873