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CISCO SWITCH IN TRANSPARENT MODE

anirudh.wna
Level 1
Level 1

hello everyone,

                     i have a 2960 compact  switch. i wanted to know whether its possible to make this switch transparent. the requirement is that whenever the switch is connected to any lan, it should be able to access the lan without any configuration being made.

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

There's not a way that I'm aware for it to pass all vlans other than trunk ports. The problem is that if you have a server, for example, that needs to be on vlan 10, but your native vlan is 1, then you have to put the server on an access port unless that server can tag its traffic with a vlan tag of 10. If it cannot, then the switch has to know what vlan to put the port on. That by itself makes it difficult to have a switch that you can move around because requirements may be different at different locations.

If you have a single vlan it wouldn't be as difficult.

HTH,
John

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HTH, John *** Please rate all useful posts ***

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8 Replies 8

John Blakley
VIP Alumni
VIP Alumni

If you have vlans in your network, it's going to be a little more difficult. Especially if you have dedicated ports for certain vlans. If you only have a native vlan, then you can ship it around without worry because the default native vlan is 1 which is standard among all vendors.

HTH,
John

*** Please rate all useful posts ***

HTH, John *** Please rate all useful posts ***

oh no.. i have not one or two but 12 vlans. but how do i set it to transparent.  do i just set it to vtp transparent even though i do not have any vtp domain. and also will it be a trunk port?so basically you are saying that if there is just one vlan in the switch with all the ports alloted to that one vlan, then it will be okay... please clarify... thanks..

There's not a way that I'm aware for it to pass all vlans other than trunk ports. The problem is that if you have a server, for example, that needs to be on vlan 10, but your native vlan is 1, then you have to put the server on an access port unless that server can tag its traffic with a vlan tag of 10. If it cannot, then the switch has to know what vlan to put the port on. That by itself makes it difficult to have a switch that you can move around because requirements may be different at different locations.

If you have a single vlan it wouldn't be as difficult.

HTH,
John

*** Please rate all useful posts ***

HTH, John *** Please rate all useful posts ***

pieterh
VIP
VIP

If you really mean ANY lan, then this Cannot be done!
Your switch can only know what vlans are present in a lan using something like VTP.
But then this must be YOUR lan with a known VTP domain.

What your switch CAN do is pass untagged packets.from and to an access port whichever access vlan this port has configured.
Your switch also needs only access ports configured.

ALL other situations will need Some configuration.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

yes i can see that i will have some trouble with this. my idea was to connect the 2960 compact switch anywhere with the transparent mode enabled or to  another access port of another cisco switch so that  the 2960 could access the access vlan of the other switch. and all this i thought could be done without any vlan creation in the 2960 switch. i was probably too dumb.. anyways thanks a lot for the clarification.

"i was probably too dumb.."

Not at all! I know it would make our lives a lot easier if we could simply move things around....

HTH,
John

*** Please rate all useful posts ***

HTH, John *** Please rate all useful posts ***

No it is not at all dumb.

Transparent mode means the switch does not learns vlans using VTP.

it will just pass vlan tagged packets even for vlans it does not "know".

but then again, where must the switch send it to?

your options are

- trunk port with all vlan allowed

- access port with configured access vlan (but then the vlan must be known)

As john allready pointed out most attached devices need connection to an access port

or they must be able to process vlan tagged packets themself and be attached to a trunk port

a partial solution is

- configure one port as a vlan trunk (connected to another trunk port)

- for every vlan configure a number of ports as access port

if you have sufficient ports you may configure a number of ports in each of the vlans (you mentioned 12 ?)

Your limitations are the vlans you configured and the number of access ports configured for each vlan.

eg a 48 (+1 uplink) port switch with 4 ports in each vlan.

hi pieter and john,

                              thanks a lot for your clarification regarding this..

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