Interconnecting 6500 distribution switches

[spelfrey]

What is the best/common practice L2 or L3 connection between 2 distribution switches?

[Collin Clark]

Depends on your design! Post more info on how your network is setup.

[spelfrey]

I have 2 6500 with 2 Sup720 each running IOS. The A and B switch is connecting to the access switches with RSTP+. The A switch is the Primary root and the B is Seconday root.

[glen.grant]

How do you have the design , hsrp on each side ????

[spelfrey]

HSRP is in the Plan but net yet implemented. As for now it is on both with the HSRP pimary on the Root and the Secondary on the Secondary.

[jenseike]

You should allways keept his a L3 link if that is posible. Best design practice for making the most determistic best performance network that that are the least complex. So, if you make your access layer vlan with keeping vlans to only one switch ?ou should. Also, use glbp if you can, having redundant loadbalinsing all the way from access-layer without having to keep tuning stp and hsrp...

There is several things you need to take in to considiration for this.. You should also consider the posibility to remove the L2/L3 decarmation points from distribution to access-layer making L3 routing all the way.

So to sum up, there are so many things to consider, but the first thing you should ask your selfe is : Is it posible to remove that L2 link from Distro switches. If yes. Do so...

Read a pdf file called : Designing a Campus Network for High Availability

This document you can search up on CCO and it discusses all this pros and cons with regards to this..

There is also a doc called :

High Availability Campus Network Design?

Routed Access Layer using EIGRP or OSPF

Jens Petter

[Collin Clark]

That's not always true. What if you have a VLAN across multiple access layer switches? Take a look at STP and then tell me you want a L3 link between your distros.

Scott-

Check out SRND at http://cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns656/networking_solutions_program_category_home.html

How many access switches do you have? How many VLAN's on those switches? How are the connected to the distro? What are your access switches?