Cisco Switch ?

[pgator17]

I am new to Cisco switches. We have 3 locations each loaction is connected via fiber. Loc1 holds all our servers including our single dhcp server. Loc1 also has 4 vlans and about 10 cisco 3500 switches and then 1 fiber connection to a catalyst 6000. Loc2 has the about the same amount of switches and it also connects to the 6000 as does loc 3. Each location has about 4 vlans each sorry I am not by the switches right now and can not exactly remember. I am kind of confused by a couple things. 1st. Each vlan is configured in its own network such as vlan2 would be 10.0.1.xxx and vlan3 would be 10.0.2.xxx vlan4 is 10.1.1.xxx we only have one dhcp server and it is in the 10.0.5.xxx network. How does a pc connected to vlan2 know that its address should be 10.0.1.xxx is this based on the switches ip address? Each vlan can talk to any of the others so no matter which pc i am at I can ping anywhere in the network. Is there an easy way to tell what the switches ip addresses are? I have no documentation that can be found including no passwords. How can I tell what the ip address is for the catalyst 6000 , and is there a gui interface for this unit like the switches web interface?

When creating a vlan do you simply go into the switch and create the vlan and then assign a port to the vlan and it get propagated to all the other switches?

Also I would like to purchase some cisco training books not necessarily for certification but more for how to configure and manage the switches but the cert would be nice as well, any advice on books or online training that is good?

Thank You in advance
Scott

 

[vipergg]

Dhcp server on one network say 10.1.5.X . A device on another vlan say 10.1.4.0 , a dhcp request is a broadcast request which forwarded to the default gateway which the router vlan address which changes it to a unicast and is forwarded to the dhcp server with a "ip helper address" which has to be configured if the dhcp is on a different vlan . The router interface becomes the source address for the unicats when it arrives at the dhcp server it sees the source and looks up the asignments in the pool for that subnet and sends back an offer to the client . There is a couple more conversations after before the address is accepted .
If all your switches are cisco and they are tied back to single device like a 6500 just do a "show cdp neighbor detail" and this will give your all the ip 's of the "attached" switches .

As far as assigning vlans it depends on how you set up your network for trunking whether it is transparent or a client server setup . If transparent the vlans will have to be created on every switch and manually assigned to the ports.
If using a server /client setup you create a vtp domain by giving each switch the same vtp domain name . when you create a layer 2 on the server this will then progate and get created on all client devices so you do not have to manually create the vlans on the clients but you still have to manaully assign that vlan to the ports themselves.

Really a good place to learn stuff is right on the cisco.com website , all kinds of info on how to configure just about anything.

 

[pgator17]

Thanks for the great input.

I have a seperate bandwidth other than our main internet connection and the isp that provided it gave us a local ip address 10.xxx.xxx.xxx I dont know why they did this but they did. We can use this as a polycom connection to other locations for video and voice and all other locations are on the same network 10.xxx.xxx.xxx as us, each loction got 4 ipaddreses but we will only use one. How can I get this address to route through my network so If I take the polycom to any location and plug it into any switch the video/voice network will be able to route to the polycom.
My thought is If I create a vlan say vlan 13 on say port 24 of each and every switch and plug the connection from the isp into this port and than on everyone one of my switches configure port 24 to vlan13 would this work if I plugged the polycom into port 24 on any switch? The polycom unit has an address of 10.113.24.xxx which is not one of my network addresses but is the address the isp told us to use.

Thanks Scott