Creating a Redundant Network

[jhaggett]

I am looking for advice for a proper design for this scenario.

Say I have 50 computers. All 50 computers need a redundant link together. So, I have 6 2950's. I want to use 3 for say 192.168.1.0 and the other three for 192.168.2.0 and I want each machine to plug into each network to basically create two totally redundant networks.

Would you connect all 6 switches together or would you connect 3 each and not physically have the two networks connected at all? Will it created loops if they are connected together?

your help is greatly appreciated.

[don.orlik]

First of all, do the PC's have two individual network cards or are you running some form of failover setup using NICS that support this function? I would be wary of the setup of the network cards because you could run into issues of which path is used. from the desktop perspective.

Let's say you use failover network cards, I would then create two seperate networks that are seperated by a router or some form of Layer 3 device. By the way, what is the Layer 3 device for your network? Do you want the 192.168.1.x network to talk to the 192.168.2.x network?

In answer to your question about loops, the only way you would create loops is if you turned off Spanning-Tree or connected ports that were configured as host ports to each in other in a loop fashion. If you use the uplinks and create a stack of 6 switches without any configuration at all, spanning-tree will protect your network from Layer 2 loops.

I hope this gets you started in the design of your network.

[jhaggett]

All of the workstations have two seperate network cards. There is no layer 3 device as the 1.0 and 2.0 networks need not talk with eachother. They also will not be accessing the Internet.

I would like to have it so every workstation is plugged into a 1.0 switch and a 2.0 switch.

Thanks for your help!