[lug] networking question

[Nate Duehr]

Zan Lynx wrote:

>On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 23:02, Hugh Brown wrote:
>  
>
>>Is there any throughput advantage to connecting two switches with two
>>ethernet cables as opposed to one?
>>    
>>

If the switches support "trunking" or similar. 

>>case in point: I have a network upstairs with about 80 active nodes.  We
>>just put a network in downstairs that will have 72 active nodes
>>eventually.  There are switches downstairs serving that network and
>>switches upstairs (essentially we are forming a backbone).  The switches
>>are unmanaged.  I assume it is a good idea to have a second cable for
>>redundancy, I'm just curious to know if the throughput goes up.
>>    
>>
>
>The last managed switch I worked with did support this.  Up to 4 ports
>could be used together.  It was a Bay Networks something or other.
>
>  
>
Most Cisco 29XX and 3XXX switches can do this too.

>What I think happens more often is a single gigabit uplink port combined
>with 100 megabit switch ports.  I've seen many unmanaged 8 and 16 port
>switches with this combination.
>  
>
I agree with this more than the trunked configuration -- in most cases 
the switches are in physcially locked rooms, the cable runs are inside 
walls/ceilings and I think using a switch that has a gigabit port that 
can be done with fiber is usually less prone to configuration screwups 
and general overall simplicity is higher.

But I'm a box admin, not a real "networking guy".  Others may have 
smarter/better opinions. 

Having the "intelligent" (read: expensive) switches also allows for 
other things that are great in a growing environment... VLAN's.

Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com