So I am working at a clients office and he has a 48 port patch panel which is pretty full, connecting to PC's with Gigabit NICS. 24 of the cables are connected to a small Cisco SR202 switch and the other 24 are connected to a similar switch. Both Gigabit. This is where it gets wacky. He has one cable from each of the Cisco switches plugged into a 48 port HP Procurve switch which has one cable connected to the firewall. I am trying to get him to lose the two Cisco switches in the middle but I want to know the verbiage when he asks why. Having 24 ports using a single Cat5 cable as a "trunk" does not make sense to me. I have been too long out of the switch world to give him a good answer. Check out my crude diagram attached. Basic-Diagram.jpg