Introducing the GWN7800 Series of Layer 2+ Network Switches

Originally written by Brian Van Meter and posted on Grandstream Networks.

Over the past several years, Grandstream's portfolio of products has been gradually widening to offer installers and IT decision-makers the ability to create a comprehensive IT infrastructure of IP phones, IP PBXs, facility management devices, Wi-Fi equipment, and more. It is after a much-anticipated wait that we are introducing our first line of switches, the GWN7800 Series. The GWN7800 series are Layer 2+ managed network switches that allow small-to-medium enterprises to build scalable, secure, high-performance, and smart business networks that are accessible from the cloud. By reading this blog post, you'll learn about the technical capabilities of the GWN7800 series, key competitive features, deployment scenarios, and other important information you'll need to sell and deploy these devices. 

Key Technical Feature Overview

Grandstream's series of network switches come with a wide variety of technical features that not only create a stable network architecture for Wi-Fi, unified communications, and IoT solutions but also make managing and configuring the switches easy. Below, you can find a comparison chart that covers the core technical capabilities of our switches, along with a brief exploration of important features. 

Powerful Processing Capabilities

One of the more important aspects of a switch is its processing capabilities. Grandstream's GWN7800 series comes with three distinct models, each with a PoE variant, that have increased switching capabilities and ethernet/SFP ports the higher the model number. The PoE-capable switches allow them to not only provide a rapid ethernet connection of up to 56Gbps to devices but also power through the IEEE 802.3af/at standard. Besides raw processing power capabilities, GWN7800 switches also come equipped with advanced features that installers may use to customize device performance further.

GWN7800 Series Switching Technical Documentation

When it comes to basic port settings, configurations such as disabling/adding a port, adding port descriptions for organizational purposes, specifying port speeds, and adjusting the device's Gigabit copper ports or SFP fiber ports can all be edited easily via the GUI. Additional configurations such as setting the Jumbo Frame of the switch can also be found within these basic settings. Finally, when it comes to monitoring the performance of a network, full flow statistics can also be found in this section that displays in real-time the flow of port data relative to Octects, Packets, Transmission Rate, and OurErrPackets.

More in-depth switching and processing capabilities such as Port Auto Recovery and Link Aggregation can also be fully customized. Through the Port Auto Recovery tab via the WebGUI or chosen GWN management platform, an installer can adjust settings that help recover a port after a specific delay. When the following functions of the port trigger the port down, the port automatically returns to the upstate after the delay time:

• ARP packet detection: If the ARP rate in DAI exceeds the set value, the current port will be shut down.
• STP BPDU Guard: In spanning tree, the port enables BPDU Guard. When this function is triggered, the port will be shut down.
• Port Loop: When the port is self-looping and spanning tree is enabled, the port will be shut down.
• ACL: When the ACL rule is matched and the action is shut down, the port will be shut down.
• Port Security: When the number of port MAC addresses exceeds the set number, the port will be shut down.

Link Aggregation is another vital feature that can be leveraged to improve the processing capabilities of the GWN switch. This feature groups physical ports together to make a single high-bandwidth data path, and as a result, can implement traffic load sharing among the member ports in a group to enhance connectivity. GWN7800 switches have two load balance modes, either based on MAC Address or on the IP - MAC Address. For the type of LAG, installers can choose between static or LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol), and then the Load Balancing Mode can be set between the MAC address and IP/Mac Addresses. Once a LAG is created, port settings can be edited to provide a description, enabled or disable the port, set the rate of the interface, and set the flow control. 

VLAN

A VLAN (virtual local area network) is a group of hosts with a common set of requirements that communicate as if they were attached to the same broadcast domain, regardless of their physical location. Any VLAN has the same attributes as a physical local area network (LAN), but it allows for end stations to be grouped together even if they're not in the same location of the switch. VLANs can be added via the GWN Switch and then assign specific ports/LAGs to them, enabling installers to dictate what unified communications, Wi-Fi, and IoT devices are a part of a given VLAN setup. Port settings can be deeply customized when customizing the VLAN:

• Link Type: Choose between Hybrid, Access, and Trunk link types. Hybrid is best for connections between switches, or switch and computer, Access is used for connecting the switch to a user terminal, and Trunk for interconnecting switches or switches and routers, and can carry data frames of multiple different VLANs
• PVID: The default VLAN ID
• Accept Frame Type: Can choose between the Frame type (Tag Only, Untag Only, or All)
• Ingress Filtering: Set whether to enable the inbound filtering function of the interface
• VLAN Port Members: Define both Tagged and Untagged VLANs for each port individually

With GWN7800 switches, Voice VLANs are configured specifically for a voice data stream. By configuring Voice VLANs and adding the ports with voice devices attached to voice VLANs, an installer can perform QoS-related configuration for voice data, ensuring the transmission priority of a voice data stream and voice quality. Lastly, OUI addresses, which are unique identifiers assigned by IEEE to a device vendor, can be observed via the VLAN configuration on the GWN GUI/GWN management platform. 

GWN7800 Series VLAN Technical Documentation

Quality of Service (QoS)

Between IP endpoints, Wi-Fi access points, computers, and other IoT equipment, there are many devices and their accompanied services that can cause a strain on any local network and surges in internet traffic. When left unchecked, this can cause network congestion, increased forwarding delay, and even packet loss in severe cases, causing severe degradation of network performance for all clients within a deployment. Grandstream's GWN7800 series of networking switches come equipped with QoS features that allow installers to create "guaranteed" policies that can govern network traffic. These features provide end-to-end service quality assurance for various business needs, to make sure all devices within a network are experiencing a smooth connection by effectively allocating network resources. 

GWN7800 Series QoS Technical Documentation

Port Priority

Port priority is a feature that allows you to configure whether a port of LAG will utilize port priority and customize which Trust Mode is used. In simpler terms, it allows you to queue and prioritize network traffic traveling through specified ports when conflicts occur during times of high network usage. When configuring port priority via the configuration GUI for a specified port of LAG, an installer can choose from the following Trust Modes:

• CoS: Traffic is mapped to Queues based on the CoS Queue Mapping, which is configured on the CoS Mapping page of the GUI
• DSCP: All IP traffic is mapped to queues based on the DSCP field in the IP header. If the traffic is not IP traffic, it is automatically mapped to the lowest priority queue
• Cos-DSCP: A combination of the previous two modes, all IP traffic is mapped to queues based on the DSCP field in the IP header. If the traffic is not IP traffic but has a VLAN tag, it is mapped to queues based on the CoS value in the VLAN tag. This can be configured via the DSCP Mapping page in the GUI
• IP-Precedence: The IP precedence is a 3-bit field in TOS that threats high priority packets as more important than other packets, it can be configured in the IP Mapping page

After setting the port priority for each port/LAG that will be utilizing this feature, an installer can begin configuring the priority mapping. These configurations are used to set the conversion between the QoS priority carried in the packet and the internal priority of the device. Cos mapping, DSCP mapping, and IP mapping can all be adjusted here to map the relationship between IP priority and queue. 

Queue Scheduling, Queue Shaping, and Rate Limit

When network congestion does occur, the GWN7800 switch will determine the processing order for forwarding packets according to the specified scheduling policy. This ensures that the highest-priority packets are preferred within the scheduling, maintaining a high-quality network experience for everyone despite congested network traffic. Network congestion may also occur when the packet sending rate is higher than the receiving rate, or the interface rate of a downstream device is lower than the interface rate of an upstream device. The GWN's Queue Shaping feature can be used for these situations to restrict the service flower to ports/user devices based on a maximum rate/CIR (Kbps).

When editing the GWN7800's Queue Scheduling feature, there are two priorities that can be selected.

• Strict Priority (SP) Scheduling: The flow with the highest priority is always served first during periods of network congestion, then the flow with the second highest priority is serviced, and so on until there is no flow at that priority level. Each switch interface supports up to 8 queues, with 7 being the highest and 0 being the lowest priority. The disadvantage of this queue type is if devices connected to high-priority queues have high network demands, low-priority ports are served much less often. Resulting in a poor network experience for low-priority ports. 
• Weighted Round Robin (WRR) Scheduling: With this scheduling method, each priority Queue is allocated a certain bandwidth, and provides services for each priority queue are according to the priority from high to low. With the high-priority queue having used up all the allocated bandwidth, it is automatically switched to the next priority queue, and so on. Compared to Strict Priority Scheduling, this method allows devices with lower-bandwidth requirements on low-priority ports to still obtain the network connection they need to function. 

Lastly, Rate Limit is a Quality of Service feature on the GWN7800 switches that can control the number of packets sent or received on a specified port interface. The interface limit also uses the token bucket to control the flow of network traffic through specified ports. When an interface rate limit is configured, all packets sent through the port must first be processed through the token bucket of the interface rate limiter. If there are enough tokens in the bucket, the packet will be sent; otherwise, the packet will be discarded or cached.

Deployment Scenario

The GWN7800 series are layer 2+ managed network switches that have up to 24 Gigabit ports and 4 SFP ports that can be affixed with fiber or ethernet modules. Our switches follow the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, which has seven layers that describe various stages of connectivity in a deployment. The GWN7800 series falls into the 2nd layer of the OSI model, the Datalink layer. A GWN7800 device manages the node-to-node data transfer between two directly connected nodes and also handles error correction from the 1st layer of the OSI model, the physical layer of cables, jacks, and other data streams. However, the GWN7800 series are Layer 2+ switches, meaning they do have some Layer 3 capabilities, such as the ability to support VLANs and static routing support. 

A GWN7800 is best deployed for small-to-medium businesses and enterprises. A single GWN7800 can support many endpoint devices such as IP phones or computers, and can also serve as a backbone for Wi-Fi access point deployments. Due to both the powerful processing capabilities and QoS features mentioned above, a single GWN7800 switch can not only properly handle network traffic of intensive small-to-medium businesses, but also properly ensure a high network performance even during periods of extreme network congestion. In short, deploying the GWN7800 as a Layer 2 device will ensure that end-point devices and applications experience smooth connection speeds and that the local network is being utilized as efficiently as possible. 

Interested in learning more about the GWN7800 Series of Layer 2+ Managed Switches?

• View the product page here.
• Read through the technical product documentation.
• Learn about all of our networking solutions.