I was hoping someone could help me out with an issue I'm having on my Local Area Network concerning Cisco Catalyst Express 500 series switches and trunking. I have a Cisco 3900 series switch configured with VLANs and I have a trunk port connected via fiber from the 3900 series switch to a Cisco Catalyst Express 500 switch. I have reset the Catalyst Express 500 switch back to default settings and wiped the config. I then went into the initial setup on the 500 switch and configured both the fiber ports on the 500 switch to the "Switch" role using the GUI. I left the other ports as "Access" ports. The 500 series switch is showing that the trunk connection is up, the link is good, and the speed is 1000 Mbps on the trunk link back to the 3900 series switch.
The problem is that the 500 series switch is not picking up the VLAN information from the 3900 series switch, even with the fiber ports set to the "Switch" role in the Smartport settings. I can plug my laptop directly into the 3900 series switch, set my NIC to DHCP, and get an IP address from the 3900 series switch. However, when I plug my laptop into the 500 series switch I don't get an IP address via DHCP. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I think the 500 series switch is not picking up the VLAN information from the 3900 series switch, even though the trunk link appears to be up and working between the two switches. All ports on the 500 series switch are members of VLAN 1.
What do I need to do on the 500 series switch to get it to pick up the VLAN info from the 3900 series switch? I know that the 500 switch only supports Transparent Mode, but is this what's causing the problem? Would changing the Smartport role of the trunking port on the 500 switch to something other than "Switch" fix this issue? If so, what should I change it to? Would changing the Smartport role of the trunk connection port on the 500 switch from "Switch" to "Router" or "Server" fix this problem?
Thanks very much to anyone who is able to give me any advice on this.
