Basic concepts
An MFF-enabled device provides two types of ports: user ports and network ports.
User port
An MFF user port is directly connected to a host and processes the following packets differently:
Allows DHCP packets and multicast packets to pass.
Delivers ARP packets to the CPU.
After learning the gateways' MAC addresses, a user port allows only the unicast packets with the gateways' MAC addresses as the destination MAC addresses to pass. If no gateways' MAC addresses are learned, a user port discards all received unicast packets.
Network port
An MFF network port is connected to a networking device, such as an access switch, a distribution switch or a gateway. A network port processes the following packets differently:
Allows multicast packets and DHCP packets to pass.
Delivers ARP packets to the CPU.
Denies broadcast packets.
You need to configure the following ports as network ports:
Upstream ports connected to a gateway.
Ports connected to the downstream MFF devices in a cascaded network (a network with multiple MFF devices connected to one another).
Ports between devices in a ring network.
A network port is not always an upstream port.
If you enable MFF for a VLAN, each port in the VLAN must be an MFF network or user port.
Link aggregation is supported by network ports in an MFF-enabled VLAN, but is not supported by user ports in the VLAN. You can add network ports to link aggregation groups, but cannot add user ports to link aggregation groups. For more information about link aggregation, see Layer 2—LAN Switching Configuration Guide.