having trouble getting Cat6500 to work with Dell 6024

[aaron.perez]

So here's my dilemma...

I've inherited a Dell & Nortel network. They all connect to a "core" switch, which is a Dell 6024.

We're moving our network to Cat 2960s and a 6509 as the core. I have the vlan database setup, and can talk effortlessly to all our Cisco products. But I am having the hardest time getting the 6509 to connect to the Dell switch.

What I would like to do is have the 6509 conencted to the network and move all the idfs one at a time to 2960s and the 6509.

I've been able to get the 2960's to talk to the Dell switches, so long as I turn off vlan tagging on the dells. I think I've tried everything imaginable to get the 6509 to talk, but it just will not.

Here is what I am doing:

I've made an sfp slot a trunk, and tried every type of encap. I've made the Dell port a trunk, tried with and without tagging.

We are also changing our subnets, as our make no damn sense.

Since both switches L3, I was thinking of creating L3 ports and each side, and just sending the appropriate traffic to each other.

I'm not an expert by any means, so I'm not sure if these are dumb questions or not... but I wanted to see if anyone else has ever had this problem, or a better idea on how to do this.

Thanks in advance

Aaron

[Roberto Salazar]

Not sure what entails "having trouble getting 6509 to connect". Does that mean the port is showing not connected or not trunking? Or does it mean the ports are showning ocnnected but not passing traffic? What is the 6509 running? Native ios or CatOS (it does not make a difference on making them connect but the show commands that you will be ask will make a difference if the 6509 is catos or IOs)?

[aaron.perez]

The port shows connected on both switches, but no traffic is being passed, on the dell I tell it to send all traffic for that subnet to the Cisco, but I cannot get anything to pass through.

The 6509 has a SUP 720 card and is running native IOS. It has 4 x 48 10/100/1000 line cards and a 48 port sfp card in it.

I think my next step will be to see if I can get it to connect via copper.

I know its a stupid question, but will it show that it isnt trunking? If so, how can I see that?

Thanks

Aaron

[Roberto Salazar]

show int trunk will show you if the port connecting the the DELL is trunking. Also, do a show counter interface gig or fast x/x to see if the port is rx'ing or tx'ing packets. One more thing, how are you verifying that traffic is not going through the 6509? Can you do a simple ping from DELL to the 6509, preferrably a same subnet ping from DELL to 6509, meaning if DELL is 10.1.1.1/24 then ping 10.1.1.x/24 on the 6509. Maybe you can post the output result here and the show run int gig or fa x/x.