Ethernet RING????

[betomaniac]

Hi. I have to provide a solution of redundancy to a customers network. I was wondering if it was possible to make a kind of ring with a few switches and 1 router. I mean from the router i take 2 cables, one to each switch and then another cable from switch to switch, so in case one of the cables breaks, i still have the switches connected to the router. and, if i want to add another switch it can be inserted in the ring and not depending on another switch.
The distance between the switches and the router creates the need of a solution like this

 

[jimbopalmer]

With cheap equipment, you will get a broadcast storm and the network will flood to a halt in under 5 minutes. If you go upscale and use routers and switches that know about spanning tree, you will do fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanning_tree_protocol

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[cajuntank]

As jimbopalmer stated, you will get a broadcast storm if you loop your equipement unless your equipment supports STP (spanning tree protocol). This is a layer 2 technology that puts ports in a non-blocking or blocking state. The port/s that are put into a blocked state will shift to unblocked should the unblocked port/s lose connection.

I just finished doing something like this, but on a layer 3 platform layer 3 switches and OSFP Equal Cost Multipath Routing. I have a fiber ring running around my campus and each switch has two 10Gb ports (fiber in, fiber out) till they loop up. Not only does this provide redundancy, but also provides usage of "the other half" of the loop for better throughput. The routing protocol tells the other L3 switches what the best route is to the subnet in question at that time and since all of the links are the same speed, I take advantage of load sharing to fully utilize the loop.