Unsolved

This post is more than 5 years old

23 Posts

4829

April 27th, 2004 10:00

Full redundancy between the network equipment and the servers

Hello,

For the moment I have a network similar to the image below, the only differences are that both 5224 are connected together through a 4 ports trunk, I have 2 firewall/routers which haven't a redundant connection (both are connected to only one 5224) and to connect to the PCs I'm using Powerconnect 3048 and not 3248.

With my design the redundant connection from the 3048s to the second 5224 is blocked by the STP protocol and so I'm looking for a design to use both connections (primary and redundant) at the same time to increase the bandwith between the 3048s to the 5224s.

My questions are:

1- Can I disconnect the trunk between both 5224?

2- If yes what should be the bridge priority of both 5224?

3- Would the STP protocol still disable one of the redundant connection from the 3048s to the 5224s?

3- Should I create a trunk to connect the 3048s to the 5224s?

4- What would happen to the connections to the firewall/routers?

Figure 3. Typical redundant design for medium-sized office

Thanks for your comments.

Regards,

emmanuel

2 Intern

 • 

812 Posts

April 27th, 2004 12:00

Emmual,

It sounds like you are asking about a way to use multiple paths for data to increase your bandwidth. If this is the case, there is no way to do that. Equal Cost Multiple Path can be done at Layer 3 using some routing protocols, but this is typically not an option at Layer 2.

With a redundant Layer 2 topology, disabling Spanning Tree would be the only way to prevent the redundant links from blocking the ports. However, this would cause a broadcast storm that would crash your network.

If you are simply trying to increase the bandwidth between the aggregation switches (3048s) and their core switch (5224), you can use a Link Aggregation group ("port trunk") to increase the bandwidth on the uplink.

No Events found!

Top