can i enable 802.1q VLAN trunking on a 3com 3848 and a 3812 switch ?

both switches do support vlans.
you can configure them to use vlans between switches

i ahve been informed that these switches do not support VLAN trunking , do you have a link that says otherwise?   how would I go about setting up VLAN trunking for this switch? what are the commands that I would use?

Thanks, I very much appriciate your help.

http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=prodspec&sku=3CR17402-91&pathtype=purchase

Ethernet switching features: Full-rate nonblocking switching on all 1000 Mbps Ethernet ports; flow control; IEEE 802.1Q VLAN support; IEEE 802.1p traffic prioritization; IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (10/100/1000 ports only); IEEE 802.1w Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol

So it looks as if I would have to designate the fiber ports on both switches to be trunk links , how would I go about doing this ? i think the operative thing in your above statement is that it supports IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation control protocal ( 10/100/1000 ports only) but would this apply to a fiber port?.


Thanks again for your help the link is very helpfull !!!

this switch does not support fiber nativley it looks like . so the switch must have some kind of fiber transiever to accomplish this task . I have not ben to the site yet

link aggrigation means the same thing as trunking , correct?

hi!
nope, ling aggreration (sometimes referred as trunking) means using multiple ports as one, so the bandwidth aggregates.
tagging (or sometimes also referred as trunking) means transmit multiple vlans via one port, in this case you have to use tags on each packet in order to destinguish which packet belongs to which vlan.
if you have fiber line, you can use media convertors (like dlink dmc-810sc, or SFP media transcievers)
i suppose you want to connect two switches with one fiber line at 1gig speed and transmit multiple vlans between them.
in this case you need two SFP transceivers(LX or SX depends on your line (single mode or multi mode)) and vlan tagging

ah I see , thanks for the clairification on the term trunking , I did not know that it had 2 different meanings . so if iF I understand this correctly the switch in question will be able to be configured to tag the frames for VLAN1, VLAN 2 and VLAN 3 , this is the big question the customer insists that the switches will support VLAN tagging but not trunking . Now the SFP transeivers I guess will be able to trunk the 3 vlans over the link? Thanks for being being patient with me it has been a long time since I messed with cisco stuff , I have been doing windows stuff for a while , So there would be 2 SPF transievers one on each switch ?