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chorn

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22 years ago

C

chorn

9 Posts

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5648

January 9th, 2005 21:00

Switch into Hub

This may sound odd, but I have some old devices with AUI to 10baseT transceivers that need to get boot information from a Linux PC. I have a 5324 switch with two vlans (1 & 2). The old devices are in vlan 2. The only way I can seem to get them to boot somewhat consistently is when I remove them from the switch and connect them to an old 10mb hub along with the linux PC. I there any way to configure the 5324 to act like the old hub?
  • G

    GregG1

    2 Intern

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    812 Posts

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    Posted January 10th, 2005 11:00

    A hub is basically an extension of the physical cable. All ports on a hub are part of the same collision domain. With a switch, each port on the switch is in its own collision domain. There is no way to configure any PowerConnect switch to act as a hub.
     
    Problems with devices booting from the network are often related to Spanning Tree. Try either enabling portfast/fastlink on the problematic ports or disable Spanning Tree globally on the switch (disabling STP is not recommended if you have more than one managed switch).
     
    See the following link to the online User's Guide for STP configuration:

    <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

     
  • D

    dzenizo

    6 Posts

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    Posted February 24th, 2005 14:00

    For what I see, the linux server does DHCP or Bootp services, and it's in VLAN 1, the old computers are in VLAN 2, so they will never get boot information or load their OS, because they don't "see" the linux server.
     
    There's no mention of a router between VLAN 1 and 2, but if there's a router present, it may have to be programmed to have "address helping" so the DHCP or Bootp information is passed from VLAN 1 to VLAN 2.
     
    Another option is to program a single VLAN so all ports share a single collision domain like a hub, and all broadcasts are received in all ports.  From what I understand, a DHCP or Bootp request is a kind of broadcast.
     
    Hope this helps

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