Connection between Cisco/non-Cisco Switches with VLANs

[jose_cortes]

Hi everybody,

I have this network in which in need segmentations in two different VLANs, one for the Administration and another for ACADEMIC pourpuse.

Because the network is in production, I can only create the ACADEMIC VLAN (VLAN 20) and I have to left the ADMIN VLAN with the default VLAN 1.

To do the Segmenetation I have 3 Switches:

     1. Switch Catalyst 3560G (as Core Switch without use L-3 capabilities only L-2).

     2. Switch Catalyst 2960 (as Distibution Switch).

     3. Switch Catalyst Exprress 500 (as Distribution Switch).

All the servers are connected to the 3560G switch and there are servers for ADMIN and others for ACADEMIC. So the are servers connected in configured ports according with the VLANs which they belong. Each VLAN has its own DHCP server.

the cat 2960 and cat express 500 are connected directly to the Cat 3560. But this two switches are also connected with non-Manageable Switches 3com and some hubs, the Cat 2960 and Cat Express are not connected with PCs or end devices, only with other switches (non-cisco)

the cat 2960 has its ports divided, 12 for the VLAN 1 and the rest for the VLAN 20.

The cat 500 has all its port at the VLAN 20.

I need to know how do I have to configure the switches to support also the segmentation and the non-cisco Switches.

should I configure the interconnection ports Between the Cisco and non-Cisco Switches as Trunk or Access?

should I configure the interconnection prots Between the Cisco and non-Cisco Swtiches with which native VLAN??

Which SmartPort profile should I choose to configure the port which connect the Cat Express 500 with the non-cisco switches?

Thanks in advance.

[Chad Peterson]

If the 3rd party switches support 802.1q trunking then you could take advantage of trunking between the Cisco switch and your 3rd party switch.  This would of course allow you to have devices in each VLAN connected to that access switch.

However if they don't support trunking, you will not be able to do this.  You would have to conifigure the link between them as access for the VLAN you want the whole access layer switch to belong to.

Back to assuming they do support trunking.  The native vlan just needs to match on each side...by default Cisco uses VLAN1 as native.  Again assuming that the 3rd party switches do support trunking, then the CE500, you would just configure the port profile as 'switch'.  Assuming you do this, your switches would be deployed something like this:

[3560]--trunk--[CE500]--trunk--[3rd party]

|

trunk

|

[2960]

|

trunk

|

[3rd party]

The main thing is that when it comes to trunking, as long as all your devices use 802.1q, then you are fine.  Multivendor deployments should act just like single vendor deployments (with regardes to trunking).

Hope that helps.  If you are planning to interconnect the access switches and create redundant links...make sure you know what type of spanning tree they run...thats a whole new can of worms that I won't get into here.