So what are the main advantages of having stackable switches to non-stackable switches.
Before the advent of stackable switches, one has to connect two or more NICs to the same switch. So if one NIC or cable goes down, the other NIC takes over. Simple enough.
There's one major flaw to this scenario: What happens if that switch goes down.
This is where stackable switches come in. When you stack two or more switches together they become a single logical switch. (I'm not going to talk about switch clustering.) In a logical switch, you configure any one of the physical switch to control all the switch in this stack. Think of it like a PC or server with multiple hard drives. You get one single interface to control your entire array of HDD.
So what's the advantage of stackable switches. It's simple: Redundancy. Redundancy when we are talking about two or more links to the client and redundancy when we talk about two or more links from the switch to the network. If one of the switch stack member fails then your data will continue to flow from your PC's second nick to the remaining switch stack member and out to the rest of your network or internet.
Another advantage for stackable switches is the management of the switches. Instead of logging into each switch you just configure each member of the switch on one switch.
Other than the 2960S and the 3750 another stackable switch model is the 2975, which is about to be end-of-sale. Another of the "stackable" switches is the VSS technology where you can "stack" two 6500E together to form a logical chassis.
Does this make sense?.
