Important terms for FortiSwitch

We are going to use the following terms in the rest of the document:

• FortiSwitch is the hardware used to aggregate the wired and wireless connections on the LAN edge, providing different layouts of physical ethernet or modular (SFP) ports and Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) capabilities, depending on the models.
• FortiSwitchOS is the operating system, CLI, and control system of the FortiSwitches.
• FortiLink is Fortinet’s proprietary protocol that secures communications and implements the controls for configuring FortiSwitches from the FortiGate.
• VLAN or virtual local-area network is a smart virtual wire that interconnects devices of the same network. When managed from a FortiGate, the VLANs created on the FortiSwitches become network interfaces used in the Firewall Policies.
• Segmentation can create multiple VLANs to separate different network segments, thereby achieving a better network design, and minimizing the spread of potential breaches at Layer 2.