Multiple ethernet interfaces without PCI LAN cards

Question

I want to have multiple Ethernet ports on my Ubuntu server 10.04. As multi port LAN PCI card are expensive, I am planning to use a cheap managed switch. The cheapest one I found was Netgear GS108T. Before buying, I wanted to confirm whether it will serve my purpose. I will be connecting one port to my server (trunk) and each of the switch's port should appear as separate Vlan's on Ubuntu so that, either, I can have separate networks or route traffic between a couple of them. The switch doesn't seem to have a separate trunking port. Does it support trunking?

Answer 1

The following lines on the spec-sheet are the interesting ones:

• IEEE 802.1Q Static VLAN (256 groups, Static) -- Supports VLANs
• IEEE802.3ad Link Aggregation (manual or LACP) -- Supports trunking

Since you only have a single LAN port on your server, trunking probably won't do anything for you. You can feed multiple VLANs to a single port.