Situation: Our organization was pushed ahead of schedule to implement switching and routing in a building that was not supposed to be ready for a while. We are setting up a new WAN that will only run IP across four counties. Since this building was ready earlier than anticipated, we are pushed to implement IPX on Cisco Catalyst 2950(4) and 3750(1) Switches that we had already purchased for the new network. The 3750 is a Distribution Switch that connects via Fiber to a Bay Networks router on the County MetroNet. The 2950s are connected to the 3750 via fiber converters to individual VLANs.
Status So Far: The 2950s should be able to process L2 as normal. IP has been flowing correctly for several days through our 3750. Users can connect to most of their servers. We have two legacy Novell networks; one is Novell 4 and the other is 6.5. Both networks still use IPX for management. One of my Engineers for our developing network recommended using VLAN Bridging and sent me a short PDF on how to implement it (Chap 42, Configuring Fallback Bridging). I have followed his steps, and now it is the weekend and no one is available.
Gotchas: After enabling Fallback Bridging on the port connected to the IPX Network in question, I have completely lost IP Connectivity for their users. Was this supposed to be done on the VLAN versus the port? I tried to go back and use the NO BRIDGE and NO BRIDGE-GROUP commands in their respective configuration locations, and IP will not come back. The specific error response is "Fa1/0/5 is not a Switching port". I even tried BRIDGE CRB, so I could transfer both IPX and IP across the same port. It did not help. I was using "SWITCHPORT MODE ACCESS" and "SWITCHPORT ACCESS VLAN 201" to bring it back to original configuration. To make it all more interesting, the building is completely locked up for the weekend, and I have to administer through VPN and Telnet, so I can not just activate another port and move them to it at this moment.
HELP: How can I get the switch back to a Switching Port to return IP Access to that network? What did I miss to correctly enable IPX Passthrough to the routers on the MetroNet? Three other networks are IP Only so I cannot make the entire switch IPX Passthrough. One more network coming up Monday is going to require IPX; it is the older of the two Novell networks. The ideal situation is to provide IP to everyone with the established VLANs and to allow IPX Bridging (passthrough) on two ports while still allowing IP Traffic, which is 90% of the activity. What else do I need to provide the community, to more accurately assist me in this endeavor?
