Connecting multiple switches to a router

Question

We have an office network that consists of the following:

1x Vigor 2950 5-port (WAN Load Balancer) 2x Netgear 24-port Managed Switch FSM726 1x PowerConnect 2724 24-port

• The Vigor has our two ADSL lines hanging off it.
• Our patch panel connects into the 2 Netgear (for all desktops, laptops, etc...)
• All servers plug in to the PowerConnect

Currently the configuration is:

• Netgear 1 connected to Netgear 2 using GB ports
• PowerConnect connected to Netgear 2 using GB ports
• Netgear 2 connected to Vigor 2950 using GB ports

Basically, the question I have is this the correct way we should be doing it? We had an instance last week when a user was copying 10GBs of large files from a server on the PowerConnect to his machine on Netgear 1 and it basically killed the network for everyone else except him.

Should I infact be connecting each Netgear and the PowerConnect into the Vigor instead?

I'm not sure what the rules are for connecting multiple switches together and I don't seem to be able to find anything good on Google.

Thanks.

Niklas

Answer 1

If you've got more than one connection between the same two switches, either:

a) Make sure that you're using spanning tree, or
b) Don't do it.

Remember, the LAN ports on the Vigor box count as a switch as well. I'm not sure what sort of bandwidth management options the NetGear switches give you, but you may also want to look into that. As far as the actual setup goes, it looks pretty solid.

Answer 2

The proper way of doing it is:

1. Don't use Netgear and Dell PowerConnect switch for mission critical network operations (Been there, done that, moved on.) Their advanced features just don't work that well, especially when using more then one feature at once.

2. Don't use a conglomeration of cheap switches for your network backbone. Invest in at least one large managed Layer 3 switch, with real phone tech support and 4 hour replacement. They exist and cost more for a very good reason.

3. Don't use cheap switches for port aggregation to combine 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet clients. They will drag down the performance of all Gigabit connections the moment the first 10 or 100Mbit is connected.

4. Now that you have real equipment that doesn't choke, use EtherChannel (siamesed ports) or Stacking to connect backbone switches together. This will allow more than one user full Gigabit throughput internally.

5. As RainyRat said, implement Spanning tree on EVERYTHING, even if it slows down recognition of new devices (30 sec instead of 3 sec).

As you have already discovered, cheap SOHO switches simply don't have the internal backbone to handle serious network traffic. Daisy-chaining them multiplies their limitations.

EDIT: If you can't afford that, you can try: EtherChannel the two NetGear switches together with a 2xGigabit link, and turn STP on. You can use 10/100 ports to limit your power user's throughput.

The PowerConnect is a managed switch, but I have found difficulties in utilizing more than one managed feature at a time. You can try to STP on the PowerConnect and EtherChannel to the NetGears, but I'm not optimistic about throughput. When I tried fixed port speed plus VLANs on my PowerConnects, they bricked and had to be hard reset.