Best practice to trunk two GB switches?

Question

I already read some similar questions but I still have no clue on how to do it the right way. I have a D-Link DGS-1248T 48 port GB-switch with 4 mini GBIC ports and I want to connect it to another switch.

My questions are:

1. Do I need another D-Link switch or even the same model or can I connect a switch of a different vendor?
2. How should I connect the two switches? Using regular Cat6 cables or using the GBIC ports?
3. Can I use all 4 GBIC (or the matching ethernet ports) to connect the switches?

My first thought was to buy the D-Link DGS-1210-24 (or the 48 port version) and connect them using normal Cat6 cables.

I am really not a network administrator but unfortunately the only IT-Guy in my office. So any suggestion on how the connect the new switch would help.

Answer 1

Best thing to start with is setting up a Trunk Port on one of the four last Ethernet ports, as you will need to Tag all our VLANs out to the next switch. could be best to buy the same vendor (DLINK) as i've had to do a few firmware upgrades on DLINK's myself to get them to properly tag packets for and trunk

It also sounds like you want to setup an Aggregated link, this is possible with this switch but only in "Static Link Aggregation" mode, if you've got a Cisco 3700 handy you should be able to set it up using LACP

best to have a quick read of this; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Aggregation_Control_Protocol

btw.. the DGS-1248T has 4 SFP ports, not sure it's mini-GBIC ports on that device