Description: A table that contains information linking physical backplane allocation to logical networks. This information is useful:

(1) to determine the physical allocation of networks on the backplane, and

(2) to determine the remaining capacity of the backplane for future network growth.

Since unknown modules are managed via dip switches, this is useful in order to set the dips to the appropriate settings.

Ethernet is a bus architecture. Once a path is allocated, all modules and ports can access that path.

Token Ring and FDDI are ring architectures. Each module on a ring requires a path. Therefore, 4 paths could be used to link 4 modules together on one ring, or 2 modules on 2 separate rings. It is possible to have a module allocated to a ring (and thus a data path) without linking to another module.

These rules can be used to determine the remaining capacity for network growth.