NETWORKING SOLUTION 1

[whosyordaddy]

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE

1 DELL SERVER WITH 2 GIG BROADCOM NICS.. CONNECTED TO
2 3COM 3300-TM SWITCHES W/1 GIG PORT IN EACH SWITCH EACH SWITCH IS SUPPORTING 20 WORKSTATIONS

I AM CURRENTLY USING 2 SUBNETS... 255.255.255.0 AND 255.255.255.128..

I HAVE ENABLED IP FORWARDING ON THE SERVER

IN ORDER TO GET A CONNECTION TO ALL WORKSTATIONS I HAVE
TO MAKE A CROSSOVER CABLE CONNECTION FROM SWITCH TO SWITCH..THIS IS WRONG...

MY INTENSION WAS TO BREAK THE SERVER NETWORK DEMAND INTO 2 DIVISION EACH WITH 1 GIG NIC TO 1 GIG SWITCH TO 20 WORKSTATIONS.. WHATS MISSING AND HAVE I BEEN MISINFORMED
3COM TECH SUPPORT CALLS THIS LAYER 3 AND WILL NOT SUPPORT..
GO FIGURE..

 

[wybnormal]

SOunds like you trying real hard to make a router out of the Dell. You need default gateways and routes setup on the multihomed box.

And yes, 3com is right.. it is layer three.. that is routing works.. layer three.

MikeS "Diplomacy; the art of saying 'nice doggie' till you can find a rock" Wynn Catlin

 

[jimbopalmer]

Yes What you plan is for the server to waste CPU cycles being a router, not good. If, indeed, you need (which I doubt that a PC can attain) more than a gig of bandwidth, then you should look into Multi Port Trunking, where more than one port has the same IP number.

I am not a 3com expert but i suspect if you connect the two 3300TMs via the matrix cable, you can use port trunking between the switches. then you get 2 gig out of the server (if the server can attain such throughput) switch redundancy, no subnets, no router software, just trunking software on the PC

Certainly cheaper in CPU cycles than routing.

 

[dkediger]

Unless you're streaming video, with just 40 users I wouldn't see a need for dual nics in the server. I would use the matrix port to connect the switches into a single stack. If you really need traffic segmentation, you could then VLAN the ports on the switch.