Switch ports as hub

[ccie5851]

I need to know if there is a way to have say 4 or 6 ports on a Cat 4006 act more like a hub than a switch. (Kind of like the old Cat 5000 group switching cards) We are having problems using Windows Load Balancing and the only way to fix the server-to-server communications problem is to hang the servers off a hub and uplink the hub to the switch. Is there any way to circumvent the normal switching behavior of a group of ports?

Thanks

[bsivasub]

None that i am aware of. Open a tac case or case with microsoft to fix the root cause rather turn the cat4k into an expensive hub ;)

If you want, you can explain why the switch behaviour is affecting the load balancing and we can try to fix the root cause.

[ggehle]

With Windows Load Balancing you are forced to hang a hub off of a switch port. I worked with MS on this issue a couple of weeks ago, and that was the only solution they had to offer. Bottom line is that at this time Windows doesn't support any multicast protocols like IGMP, so their ability to handle multicasting is fairly basic.

[bsivasub]

Here is the cisco documenation on it and it refers to the microsoft website tip as well.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/ms_wlbs.html