Aruba Comware Advanced key terms

HPE/H3C technology that combines multiple physical switches into one logical device with a shared control plane, allowing unified management, cross-device link aggregation, and faster failover.

A numeric value assigned to each IRF member that determines which device wins the master election; the highest priority becomes master, with ties broken by MAC address.

Multi-Active Detection mechanism that detects an IRF split and prevents duplicate addresses and forwarding conflicts by shutting down ports on the losing segment.

A multi-active detection method using Bidirectional Forwarding Detection over a dedicated link to detect IRF splits quickly and reliably.

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection is a lightweight hello protocol that rapidly detects path failures between two endpoints, often triggering faster routing or HA convergence.

The modular network operating system used on HPE/H3C switches and routers, featuring separate user, control, and data planes and a multi-process architecture.

Access-control feature that assigns users to roles with defined command permissions, limiting which CLI commands and views each administrator can use.

The saved configuration file loaded at boot; changes made in the running configuration are lost on reload unless saved to the startup file.

Feature that restores the device configuration to a previously archived version, useful for recovering from misconfiguration during maintenance windows.

Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting framework that verifies user identity, controls permitted actions, and logs activity, often using RADIUS or TACACS+ servers.

A client-server protocol that centralizes authentication, authorization, and accounting for network access, commonly used for device login and 802.1X.

Port-based network access control standard that authenticates supplicants before granting LAN access, using an authenticator switch and a backend authentication server.

An ordered set of rules that permits or denies traffic based on fields such as source/destination address, protocol, and port; matched top-down with an implicit default.

The application of ACL rules to interfaces or classes to drop or forward traffic, commonly used for security policy enforcement and traffic classification.

Component that identifies traffic by matching fields or ACLs and assigns it to a class, which is then associated with a behavior for marking, queuing, or policing.

QoS function that meters traffic against a committed rate and drops or remarks excess packets, enforcing bandwidth limits without buffering.

QoS function that buffers and delays excess traffic to smooth bursts and conform to a configured rate, typically applied on egress queues.

Weighted Random Early Detection proactively drops low-priority packets before a queue fills completely, signaling congestion to TCP senders and reducing global synchronization.

A Layer 2 broadcast domain logically separated on a switch, allowing traffic isolation and flexible grouping of ports independent of physical location.

A switch port that carries traffic for multiple VLANs by tagging frames with 802.1Q VLAN identifiers.

VLAN stacking technique that adds an outer 802.1Q tag to frames, enabling service providers to tunnel customer VLANs transparently across a provider network.

Combining multiple physical links into one logical link to increase bandwidth and provide redundancy; defined by IEEE 802.3ad/LACP.

Link Aggregation Control Protocol negotiates and maintains aggregation group membership dynamically, verifying that member links are compatible and active.

Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol maps VLANs to multiple spanning-tree instances, enabling load balancing across redundant links while preventing Layer 2 loops.

The switch elected as the logical center of a spanning tree; all other bridges compute loop-free paths toward it based on bridge priority and MAC address.

A spanning-tree protection feature that err-disables or blocks a port if it receives BPDUs, preventing unauthorized switches from altering the topology.

A logical grouping of OSPF routers that limits link-state flooding and requires all areas to connect to the backbone area 0.

Link State Advertisements describe topology and reachability; common types include Router (1), Network (2), Summary (3), ASBR Summary (4), and External (5).

A BGP path attribute listing autonomous systems a route has traversed; shorter paths are preferred, and prepending can influence inbound traffic.

A BGP router that reflects routes learned from one IBGP peer to other IBGP peers, removing the need for a full mesh of IBGP sessions.

The IP address used to reach a BGP route's destination; correct next-hop resolution is required for the route to be considered valid and installed.

IS-IS hierarchy uses Level 1 for intra-area routing and Level 2 for inter-area/backbone routing; routers can be L1, L2, or L1/L2.

Importing routes from one routing protocol or process into another, requiring metric and policy configuration to control which routes are advertised.

Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode builds shared and shortest-path trees only where receivers exist, using a rendezvous point for group discovery.

A PIM-SM router that serves as the shared root for multicast group traffic before sources and receivers switch to shortest-path trees.

A switch feature that listens to IGMP messages to learn which ports have multicast receivers and forwards group traffic only to those ports.

Multicast Listener Discovery is the IPv6 equivalent of IGMP, used by hosts to signal multicast group membership to routers and switches.

An ICMPv6-based protocol that resolves link-layer addresses, detects routers and neighbors, and performs address autoconfiguration on IPv6 networks.

Stateless Address Autoconfiguration lets IPv6 hosts build addresses from router-advertised prefixes and an interface identifier without a DHCP server.

Forwarding based on short fixed-length labels instead of destination IP lookups; label edge routers push/pop labels and core routers swap them.

The path a labeled packet follows through an MPLS network, established by signaling protocols such as LDP or RSVP-TE.

Multiprotocol BGP extends BGP to carry reachability for multiple address families, including VPNv4 routes used in MPLS Layer 3 VPNs.

Virtual Routing and Forwarding creates independent routing tables on one device, isolating customer or tenant traffic in MPLS VPN deployments.

A suite of protocols that authenticates and encrypts IP packets, commonly used for site-to-site VPNs and secure remote access.

Internet Key Exchange negotiates security associations and keys for IPsec, using phase 1 for the management tunnel and phase 2 for data tunnels.

A high-availability feature that preserves forwarding state during control-plane restart or failover so traffic continues while routing protocols reconverge.

Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol provides a shared virtual gateway IP among routers so hosts retain connectivity if the master fails.

A switch feature that restricts which MAC addresses may access a port and limits the number of learned addresses, mitigating spoofing and rogue devices.

Comware flow-export and monitoring feature that collects IP flow statistics and sends records to a collector for traffic analysis and accounting.

An unsolicited notification sent by a managed device to a management station when a significant event occurs, such as a link or component failure.

A diagnostic feature that copies traffic from source ports or VLANs to a destination port for analysis by a protocol analyzer or monitoring tool.