Newbie vlan question

aprilsimmons · ‎02-06-2006

We have a 3550-12G switch which sits between our school network and our employee network. The school Novell server and the employee Novell server are both plugged into it on separate VLANs. The employee network has a Cisco 2610 router connected to our frame network, and both the students and employees are able to get to the Internet via this link to our Corporate Internet connection.

The 2 Novell servers are on separate NDS Trees. I cannot see the school Tree from the employee network via ConsoleOne. I can rconsole into the server and ping it fine from the employee network.

I'm thinking I need to add the switch port that the school server goes into to both VLANs, but I'm not positive. But, since it's a L3 switch, I was thinking it was already doing the inter-vlan routing and it's some other setup problem.

Thoughts?

Thanks - April

konigl · ‎02-06-2006

Your 3550-12G switch is already doing L3 switching (routing) of IP if you can ping and RConsole from the employee network to the server on the school network. And you're sure that those two networks are distinct VLANs, each with its own IP network or subnet address range.

It will probably not help you to put the school server's switch port into both VLANs. That switch port would then be trunking VLANs, which would require your server to have a network adapter capable of handling 802.1Q-tagged VLAN traffic. You would also need Novell-specific drivers for that network interface card.

If you're trying to get some sort of administrative control over the school NDS tree from the employee network side, this is more likely a Novell-specific issue. It's been over 10 years since I dealt with NetWare 4.x and NDS as a former CNE/CNI, so I've forgotten much of what I used to know.

Seems like you need to somehow join the school network's tree to the employee network's tree. Terms like "pruning" and "grafting" are coming to mind. You would probably want to do this in such a way that the employee tree is positioned as the dominant one, and the school tree is just a branch.