3Com 4400 Switch

[Copierbw]

We have 2X 3Com 4400 switches. One is on the ground floor of a office and the other one on the 1st floor. The distance between them no more than 30 metres. Seeing that it's a small operation I don't use a fibre connecting between the 2 switches but rather 2X Cat5E cables connected to 2 ports on each at the front. My question: I read somewhere in the forum about "trunk them together"? Can I do it with these switches? Will this give me greater throughput? I guess the whole idea is to make sure I use the cable and switches to it's max. Your help/advise appreciated You don't need eyes to see just a vision.

 

[baltimore]

a fiber jumper is not that expensive and will reap greater benefits.............

 

[daronwilson]

A fiber jumper may be the way to go. However, if the fiber interfaces are only 100FX then you are only going to get 100 mbs on your fiber backbone. If you uplink them with gigabit fiber then you would see the a significant benefit.

You can just link them with Cat5e, I don't know about linking them with two Cat5e jumpers, it sounds wrong but I don't know.

Good Luck! It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com

 

[Copierbw]

I think you both are right about the fibre jumper it was only that I tried to stay away from buying any additional hardware for the switches for the time being. I have setup a aggregation link on ports 1&2 on both switches with 2X Cat5E cables at this stage linking them to try and get a little bit more bandwidth than 100Mb/s...Thanks... You don't need eyes to see just a vision.

 

[QuiltedCamel]

Run them as far apart as you can for their whole length - there's always the chance that some bozo with a welding torch will kill any cable run, even when they're not supposed to be anywhere near it.

It's happened to me twice and twice I've been saved by diverse cable routing.