Cisco GigaStack question

[mjsullivan]

Please explain the benefit of running a group of Catalyst switches together via Gigastack in the setup that drops all communication to half-duplex. Doesn't this slow down overall communications and defeat the purpose??

[robho]

You can think of it as a 1Gbps backplane between the switches. If this is an issue, then use regular GBICs and set them up as p2p and get full-duplex.

3750's now offer Stackwise technology - 32Gbps switching backplane!!! There is a wealth of information for both on CCO.

[milan.kulik]

The only benefit is Gigastack GBIC low price.

This is a cheap solution for networks with minimal traffic.

I'm using Gigastack GBICs to connect two switches together only. It works in full duplex then with half price comparing to optical GBICs.

Regards,

Milan

[mjsullivan]

Well I have recently discovered that our network is utilizing about 21 Catalyst switches all running in this half-duplex configuration. The network has probably a few hundred users on it. How big of a performance hit is this compared to if all switches ran the individual full duplex connection to its own GBIC port on a higher end catalyst? I need to give a convincing argument if it warrants a recommendation to management to spend the money.

I also heard that the half duplex solution would not be supported by Cisco if VoIP was being utilized. We are going to implement this technology in the future, so if this is true, it would help my argument that its worth the money to switch to a full duplex configuration. Can anyone confirm whether Cisco won't support the half duplex with VoIP??

Thanks