Solved: Trunking between Cat 6500 switches

new_networker · ‎10-02-2008

Scenario:

I have two Cat 6500 running as active/passive. Both have 48 port modules. Now if I need to define a trunk between both the Cat 6500 i.e. for switch traffic, will it have to be defined on the ethernet module or would the link between both the Supervisory engines (Gigabit Ethernet ports) will do the job.

Regards.

Jon Marshall · ‎10-02-2008

You can use either or both. Generally you want a group of ports ie. an etherchannel for throughput and then you configure the etherchannel as a trunk.

As long as the speed/duplex settings are same you can mix fibre and copper into the same etherchannel.

Jon

View solution in original post

Jon Marshall · ‎10-02-2008

You can use either or both. Generally you want a group of ports ie. an etherchannel for throughput and then you configure the etherchannel as a trunk.

As long as the speed/duplex settings are same you can mix fibre and copper into the same etherchannel.

Jon

new_networker · ‎10-02-2008

Will this trunk be used only for switch traffic or for both i.e. all the redundancy configurations, tables exchanges, failover data etc.

Jon Marshall · ‎10-02-2008

It depends on your topology but usually the link is used for all redundancy features such as service module failover (service modules such as FWSM, CSM, ACE etc..).

A quite common topology is to have 2 6500 switches interconnected via a L2 trunk with access-layer switches then dual connected to each 6500 switch. The access-layer switches have clients/servers connected into them. The uplinks from the access-layer switches are L2 links and all the inter-vlan routing is done on the 6500 switches with HSRP running across the L2 interconnect between the 6500 switches.

This is a standard proven design that works very well.

Jon

new_networker · ‎10-02-2008

Doesn't it defeat the purpose of having a Cat 6500 ethernet module i.e. by termination client/servers on a different set of switch.

Jon Marshall · ‎10-02-2008

Again it depends on your network design and topology. I was just giving you an example of a standard design. There are always variations on this.

So you could have clients on the access-layer switches and servers connected into the 6500 switches dual honed to both ethernet modules. Even if you didn't do this you may well need ethernet modules for termination of WAN routers eg a dual honed 7200 router.

A pair of distribution 6500 switches often have service modules, fibre modules for access-layer uplinks and maybe one RJ45 ethernet module for WAN routers, servers if needed.

Jon