Port trunking question

[pcwilson]

Hi Guys

I put in a new 3Com switch today which has 2 gigabit ports and supports port trunking. I already have a Netgear switch with 24 gigabit ports which doesn't support port trunking. Using one of the 3Com's gigabit ports, I've uplinked it to the Netgear so I've got a gigabit backbone. My question is, can I trunk the 2 gigabit ports on the 3Com together and connect the second gigabit port to a spare port on the Netgear to form a 2 gigabit backbone, or do both switches need to support port trunking?

Cheers
Phil

[thepassenger]

I'm probably wrong, but I would suspect both units need to support trunking as it tries to appear as a single port/ip address to everything else; so both 'things' would need to understand what's required of them.

[aldi]

Not the worlds expert in these matters, but I think no. It'l just disable one of the ports if you plug both in.

[zumbruk]

AFAIK, each manufacturers trunking technology is different, so you can't connect different manufacturers stuff together like that.

[guydw]

if one side doesn't support trunking it won't work....

however do you mean trunking, as in carrying multiple vlans across a single trunk ? or do you mean channelling, where you aggregate several connections into a single logical connection ?

[aldi]

I assumed he meant channelling..

[pcwilson]

guydw said:

if one side doesn't support trunking it won't work.... however do you mean trunking, as in carrying multiple vlans across a single trunk ? or do you mean channelling, where you aggregate several connections into a single logical connection ?

This is an extract from the 3Com user guide. This is what I'm hoping to do:

"Link aggregation (trunking): Group together any number of copper or fiber ports to form an ultra-high bandwidth pipe connecting the switch to a network backbone and prevent any traffic bottlenecks. The switch supports up to four trunks and up to eight ports per trunk."

[guydw]

that's channelling !

trunking is aggregating a number of logical connections - or at least that's how the rest of the non 3com world would understand this, I would say that if you are trying to go multi vendor you have no chance.

[pcwilson]

guydw said:

that's channelling ! trunking is aggregating a number of logical connections - or at least that's how the rest of the non 3com world would understand this, I would say that if you are trying to go multi vendor you have no chance.

Thanks for all the advice. Looks like I'll need to buy another 3Com switch.