Switching and Trunking questions 1

[jrogerom]

Hi, I have 1 switch Catalyst 3750 and 6 Catalyst 3560. The six catalyst 3560 are cascaded from the cat 3750 using gigabit ports with no configuration.
Is it right to cascade to many switches?
Can I connect the 6 cat 3560 to the Cat 3750 configuring every port as trunk port? (like a star topology) what would be de advantes or disadvantages of trunkig? Which is the command to use for trunking? I wanted to upload the PDF network diagram but I don´t have an url to host the file.
Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[unclerico]

So you're using a flat network (i.e. no VLAN's)??

I hate all Uppercase... I don't want my groups to seem angry at me all the time! =)
- ColdFlame (vbscript forum)

 

[vipergg]

There is no disadvantage to trunking , it is common practice. Daisy chaining switches is poor practice and makes it much harder to troubleshoot and find users because you end up having to login to every switch to look for a particular mac address , if you star the switches then the main switch will tell where , which port the mac is seen on and you go directly to that switch. If you have a chance to change it to a star config do so .

 

[jrogerom]

unclerico....
Yes I am using a flat network. Well I just have 2 weeks in this new job. The IT guy before me spent 3 years here and he left 7 Cisco switches, 7 Summit Extreme network switches, 1 3com and 1 Linksys. Also no VLANs, we have 500 computers that receive VoIP from USA and access a CRM also in USA through internet. The agents use Polycom hard phones and from that hardphone the computer is connected. Also runs videos or audios for training. We have a Mikrotik Firewal, DHCP server and Proxy (all in one). Well for me he left a mess. I need to work hard to get this fixed. I would like to show you the network diagram but I don´t have account on box.net to upload it.

vipergg...
Thanks for your comments. My plan is to change switches to star. Another questions are how many trunking ports can accept the Catalyst 3750? What are the commands to use in cisco.I plan to configure 6 trunking ports on 3750 catalyst switch.

 

[vipergg]

3750 will support many more than 6 .

switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk


This creates a trunk that allows all vlans , good practice is to prune off vlns you do not need on the trunk using the "switchport trunk allowed vlan XX command.