This business used to be part of a big corporation who paid top dollar for top names in IT kit but a few years ago it was spun off on its own and has struggled ever since. It's a pretty small set up now, with just 60 workstations and a few servers. The network is a basic setup with a core switch and two edges and the equipment was once high spec but is now very old and in house expertise very limited. No real money is available to throw at the issue but recently, after some problems at one end of the building I replaced a pair of very old HP ProCurve switches (one managed and one not) with a pair of Netgear FS728TS smart switches.
Each of the old HP switches had its own dedicated (10/100) uplink back to the core. The new Netgear ones have two managed gigabit ports each and one of these has been used on each switch provide the uplink back to the core meaning each switch now has 10 times the bandwidth back to the core compared to before.
The problem I have is this. These are stackable switches and the stacking works fine and so does the management interface when stacked. But we do not seem to be able to have a separate uplink from each switch when stacked. I had assumed, wrongly it would seem, that because the switches can detect the stack ports it would use them only for management purposes. This does not seem to be the case. Connecting the stack ports between the two switches whilst each switch has its own uplink to the core causes an immediate feedback loop which knocks out the entire network.
I seem to have two choices therefore. One, I run each switch as a stand alone with its own IP and management interface and a dedicated uplink or, I stack the switches and combine the management into just one IP and interface but have all 48 ports using the single gigabit uplink on the stack master and therefore half the bandwidth available to the cabinet.
What I am doing wrong? It seems self defeating to have stackable switches running as stand alone devices but it seems daft to half the available uplink bandwidth for the sake of easier management. Surely there must be a way to combine the two - or is there something else that I have overlooked?
Each of the old HP switches had its own dedicated (10/100) uplink back to the core. The new Netgear ones have two managed gigabit ports each and one of these has been used on each switch provide the uplink back to the core meaning each switch now has 10 times the bandwidth back to the core compared to before.
The problem I have is this. These are stackable switches and the stacking works fine and so does the management interface when stacked. But we do not seem to be able to have a separate uplink from each switch when stacked. I had assumed, wrongly it would seem, that because the switches can detect the stack ports it would use them only for management purposes. This does not seem to be the case. Connecting the stack ports between the two switches whilst each switch has its own uplink to the core causes an immediate feedback loop which knocks out the entire network.
I seem to have two choices therefore. One, I run each switch as a stand alone with its own IP and management interface and a dedicated uplink or, I stack the switches and combine the management into just one IP and interface but have all 48 ports using the single gigabit uplink on the stack master and therefore half the bandwidth available to the cabinet.
What I am doing wrong? It seems self defeating to have stackable switches running as stand alone devices but it seems daft to half the available uplink bandwidth for the sake of easier management. Surely there must be a way to combine the two - or is there something else that I have overlooked?
