create trunk without down time

[mikeharrold]

is it possible to change the connection between two switchs to a trunk without causing a loss in packets? if not what is the best case scenario?

[John Blakley]

Mike,

I would create downtime just in case. When STP does it's calculation, it could impact traffic.

HTH,

John

[mikeharrold]

for this network i wouldnt worry about it.  all switchs in this network are transparent.  i will be working on that later.  but i have never changed a port to a trunk port on a live interface.  is it possible to do with out causing downtime?

[Rick Morris]

mikeharrold wrote:
for this network i wouldnt worry about it.  all switchs in this network are transparent.  i will be working on that later.  but i have never changed a port to a trunk port on a live interface.  is it possible to do with out causing downtime?

possible, yes. probably no.

If you are logged into the switches and cut and paste the config in one at a time there will be a short outage.  Will users know, maybe some.

[Rick Morris]

It is possible to not interrupt traffic, however, that all depends on how quickly you can make the change on both devices and if you allow all VLAN's or just certain ones across the trunk.

Bottom line, plan on something thing being impacted but for a very short period of time.  If there is a lot of traffic across the link then I would let those know that they may see some service interuption for about 5 minutes.  It is possible to fat finger the config too which will cause a delay as well.