Connecting a Cisco Switch to a Live Network

[yogeshakal]

Hi Everyone

Im planning to add a cisco switch to my network. A friend of mind told me to be on my guard (lol) because he had once done this before and the network was down.

Does this really happen? If yes why? And what precautions should i take before connecting the switch?

[Latchum Naidu]

Hi Yogesh,

What your friend told is true.
The most common thing you need to check is, if you have STP running in your netowrk then you need to change the priority of the switch which you are going to connect in your network because if the priority is low and that to the switch is old one then the mac address will be lower so the lowest mac address and priority will be elected as the STP root switch.
So all existing connection to your root switch will be re directed to the newly connected switch.

And if you have VTP running in  your LAN network, then check the switch vtp configuration number it must be 0 and change the vtp mode to client as by default the mode in cisco switches is vtp server mode.

Please rate all the helpfull posts.
Regards,
Naidu.

[yogeshakal]

Hi Latchum.

Thanks for these precious informations. Will take them into consideration and give a try.

Regards,

Yogesh.