procurve 4100 switch help

[Steven Chen_1]

Hello,

We are going to have a very first switch for our LAN that fills up with 8 10b/100b hubs for hundreds of windows clients and servers. Among the servers, we have several NT and one K and one L hp unix servers.

Someone suggests that we should put all hubs connected with ports of switch in order to make it right. Of course, the hp servers and nt servers should connect to switch directly.

I really hope to have comments on this implementation from gurus so that I will gain instead of loss bandwidth by malconfiguaration. Main question is: how to implement this networking structure?

All help will be very appreciated.

Steven

[Ron Kinner · Accepted solution]

The switch should be the backbone of your LAN so your hubs should normally each connect directly to a switch port. Putting your high traffic servers on their own individual switch ports is also a good idea. If you have a spare switch port after all that then put your own PC on it. Not only will you have faster access but it insures that you can talk to the switch even if you lose a hub.

While you are at it make sure you lock down the speed and duplex on both ends - switch and server so you don't have to worry about autonegotiate failing. You probably can't do that on the hubs but if you can then do it. Autonegotiate is just not trustworthy even between items from a single maker.

Ron

[Steven Chen_1]

Ron,

Thanks for the help.

Do you know the implications of auto-sensing and configurable on the switch?

Steven

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi Steven

It is better not to use auto sensing , auto negotiation at all , because it causes more overhead on the badndwith , if you have the liberty , assign all teh Hp servers to one segment , ofcourse you know the charaterstics of the Lan Ports so define the ports , try not to use auto sense etc , I think the same should aslo go in for the NT servers , for the other users , use hubs ( more economical then swithes ).


Manoj Srivastava