asked on

Port Trunking between Cisco and Dell

This is the situation; I have 3 Switches, Cisco 3500- 48 Port with 2 GBIC Ports, Cisco 3550- 48 Port with 2 GBIC Ports, and a Dell 6024F with 24 SFP slots.

I don't feel stacking them via 1 GB Fiber is going to be enough bandwidth between switches. I want to trunk the 2 ports on each Cisco switch and trunk two ports each (4 ports) on the Dell switch therefore giving me more bandwidth for stacking. I currently do not have multiple VLANS setup on the network.

I have all the proper GBIC and SFP cards available, MM Fiber and 1 GB Copper.

My question is, how do I go about doing this the best way? There is a simple web interface to the 6024F to setup trunking. Is trunking the best way to go about this? Also, could someone give me command examples for the Cisco CLI? I have never updated the switches' firmware and am not very familar with Cisco equipment.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

ECNSSMT

you can set up trunking between the Cisco switches, but I'd be doubtful if you get any joy between the Cisco and Dell.
Mostly due to their implementations of trunking.

ECNSSMT

I am not in front of a CISCO device, and I don't recall the interface name for the GBIC port (you have to make sure that there is a GBIC device in there before the command can work)

but I believe the command from global config should go something like

interface <put interface name here>
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk encapulation dot1q .... or .... switchport trunk encapulation isl *
end

I believe that dot1q is probably the more popular encapsulation type; but its your choice.

do this on both Cisco devices.

Regards

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

foochar

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

krik011

ASKER

Do some switches automatically trunk if it senses the same link twice?

SOLUTION

ECNSSMT

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial