Configuring Mnemonic Filtering

This chapter describes the procedures for configuring filters and also lists all the built-in masks for the bridge and Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) router. Filtering is an operation that determines whether specified packets are forwarded or discarded by your 3Com bridge or IPX router. The FIlter Service also controls these and other capabilities through the FIlter POLicy parameter action options: Count, Discard, DodDiscard, Forward, PROTocolRsrv <tag>, Sequence, Prioritization, and Trace. These action options are described in "Action" later in this chapter.

You need to configure prioritization separately. For complete information on the prioritization allocation, see the Prioritizing Multiprotocol Data chapter.

By using filtering in a bridged or IPX routed environment, you can:

• Achieve security and bandwidth protection by isolating specific segments of the network.

• Monitor network traffic by gathering statistics.

• Adjust the performance of your network to fit the traffic flow.

• Sequence packets so that they are received in the order they were sent.

• Reserve bandwidth for particular protocols, so that large-bandwidth user applications, such as file transfer and mail, share link capacity with lower bandwidth users such as interactive sessions and transaction-oriented applications.

Enterprise OS software includes the use of mnemonics and built-in masks for specific protocols in the configuration of filters. Through the use of built-in mnemonics, you can also create user-defined masks to meet more specialized needs.

For more information on the parameters used in creating filters and masks, see the FIlter Service Parameters chapter in Reference for Enterprise OS Software. For conceptual information, see "How Filtering Works" later in this chapter.