5308xl broadcasts

[bentschi]

hi folks

have flat network with 4 5308xl. all connected over fibre in trunk mode(2Ports). no spanning tree.

when i start the lan-backup, there is a broadcast on all connected ports(also server and workstation).

i establish a two port trunk (which means channeling) to the next switch. is porbably the trunk mode the wrong. do i have to put it into FEC mode ?

thanks
thomas

[Guido Ruhnau]

you have to configure trunk mode.
for example lacp or fec. If you don´t use the routing feature, then meshing is a nice thing.
you can put the connection where you want. you must only set the ports on th 53xx to mesh.
in older days I´ve only used fec but know every modern switch should be able to support lacp.

best regards

G

[Stuart Teo]

hi there,

you have a few options. first i assume that you have all your switches connected in a star-like configuration? or are you forming loops?

if you're forming loops, you'll need to turn on spanning tree. i personally recommend rapid spanning tree over regular spanning tree.

for trunks, you have 4 options. the 4th option is mesh.

the first 3 options are: trunk, fec and lacp. all 3 will work as long as both sides are set up to use the same. the max size of a trunk using the current firmware is 8, i believe.

for mesh, it's really nice. it's like a layer 2 routing protocol. you can 'loop and trunk' without turning on spanning tree and without having to configure trunks. all you have to do is to configure the ports that are connecting to another switch to be come a mesh port.

hope this helps.

[Stuart Teo]

oh, one footnote about meshes. there can be 12 inter-connected mesh switches. if you don't intend to scale a lot, mesh is right for you. this is called a mesh domain. you can have 2 mesh domains, each having 12 switches, and then interconnect 2 mesh domains using non-meshed ports. that would help scale a bit.