Quick Question from on old skool poster: Trunking

BrianW · 12-27-2002, 12:34 AM

Ok i am lookin' at the following item:

Aprotech ( www.aprotechusa.com , site is moving right now) AS4024R 24port 10/100M Ethernet Switch. Here is a link from directron.com : http://directron.com/as4024r.html .

I run LAN events. I want to use the AS4024R switches to support a 100-120 node lan. I want to use the trunking feature and have one AS4024R switch with 6 different (4 port trunk channel) trunks to 6 other AS4024R. I need to know if this is possible. To further illustrate: I want each AS4024R switch that will accept clients to have a 4 port trunk to one central switch which has 6 channels to the 6 switches that accept clients. So each AS4024R that accepts clients will have 20 open ports to connect to. 20 * 6 = 120.

Thank you for your help.

Brian W

murray13 · 12-27-2002, 08:55 AM

I believe that would work fine as long as all you are looking for is to maximize bandwidth between all 120 end ports. In that setup there is no place for a server with more bandwidth than the rest.

If this IS the way you go. Don't just hook up ports 1, 2, 3, 4 to the first switch and 6, 7, 8...etc. Let me know and I'll work out the best configuration for your setup.

The reason why you dont hook it up with sequential ports is basically you don't get max thruput. I'll try to find a link to help explain.

jtroutma · 12-27-2002, 11:08 AM

Are you looking for good price per performance or are you interested in straight performance?

Your solution sounds like it would work just fine in that case.

But if you have some money to burn you could go with 3Com 3300 switches and use the matrix uplink between them. Uplink is gigabit and utilizes dedicated uplink channels in the back of the units. They are very pricy and you will be limited to only 96 ports but it is a very fast and good solution.

Just thought that I should throw out another option if you are interested.

BrianW · 12-27-2002, 09:56 PM

I am very concerned with price, as I am funding this out of pocket. As far as having more bandwith to the servers, I am only using Game servers, no file servers, so I do not really need alot of bandwidth to the servers. If I do get a file server I will probably use trunking to it from the backbone switch. I will have less client support, but could always use 3 port trunks instead of 4 port trunks. I would really appreciate any articles that help with trunking and/or vlan.

Thanks again,
The community here is a great one, and I am proud to be a part of it.

Brian W

phreenet · 12-28-2002, 09:48 AM

Quote:

If this IS the way you go. Don't just hook up ports 1, 2, 3, 4 to the first switch and 6, 7, 8...etc. Let me know and I'll work out the best configuration for your setup.

That is assuming that this is a multi-ASIC switch, which I doubt because of its cheapness.

If you are expecting to get 800 Mbps to each switch (4 ports x 100 Mbps x 2 for the duplex), I really don't think this switch has the fabric required to move that amount of data. Furthermore, as I said before, it probably doesn't have any ASIC s at all, probably just microcontroller/IRQ based switching, which is pretty slow. If you are that worried about bandwidth, you might want to get some gigabit switches, but that would not be cost effective. Many LANs are run with straight 100 Mbps backbone segments. Remember, at a LAN you are looking for low latency not peek throughput, the amount of traffic won't be the same as if you were running some database backup software or something. In fact, by adding the VLAN port tagging you might cause more latency because of the CPU overhead required by the switch. I think your best bet is to just try the standard hierarchy based model.

BrianW · 12-29-2002, 01:01 AM

Thanks for the reply. I will just use these switches with regular uplink, until I can afford a more advanced solution.

pissboy · 01-18-2003, 08:17 AM

Ok, I've been running lans with switches that have multilink trunks for a while now. Bay Networks/Nortel 350T switches are *very* cheap per port and are the one of the fastest 10/100 switches availible. I dont know anythign about the no-name company you're referring to, but I'll bet their switches are built cheaply. The 350T's have 1.5MB of cache for the 16 port models, and I think a little more for the 24's. They do allow multiple multiport trunks, but it is limited to 4-4port trunks per switch. I'm not sure if their 450T's will allow more than that or not, but I usually end up just using 2-16 ports and a 24 port with 2 trunks to the 24, for a total of 40 availible ports. I do have more switches at my disposal, but I've yet to hold a lan where I'd need them.

Anyways, they're readily availible on ebay cheap. ~$70-80 for a 16 port, $100ish for a 24 port. You can find them cheaper, usually a buy it now price on the 16 ports is in that range, sometimes you can snag them in the $50's.

-pissboy

BrianW · 04-18-2003, 10:23 PM

Ok, I got three new switches.

Allied Telesyn AT-8124XL

What do you all think about the topology I should implement? Do you still think the overhead for port trunking would still degrade overall network performance?

http://www.alliedtelesyn.co.kr/Produ...ets/8124XL.pdf

BrianW

12-27-2002, 12:34 AM	#1
BrianW Cooling Savant Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Desert City in California Posts: 631	Quick Question from on old skool poster: Trunking Ok i am lookin' at the following item: Aprotech ( www.aprotechusa.com , site is moving right now) AS4024R 24port 10/100M Ethernet Switch. Here is a link from directron.com : http://directron.com/as4024r.html . I run LAN events. I want to use the AS4024R switches to support a 100-120 node lan. I want to use the trunking feature and have one AS4024R switch with 6 different (4 port trunk channel) trunks to 6 other AS4024R. I need to know if this is possible. To further illustrate: I want each AS4024R switch that will accept clients to have a 4 port trunk to one central switch which has 6 channels to the 6 switches that accept clients. So each AS4024R that accepts clients will have 20 open ports to connect to. 20 * 6 = 120. Thank you for your help. Brian W __________________ Water Cooled Inwin Q500 (Dual Rads: Rad1 = DTEK Pro Core \| Rad2 = Blick Ice Estreme, Hydor L30, Dangerden Maze2, Bay Res Typhoon Reservoir, 1/2 " DD Tygon Thick Wall Hose). Flow: Res, Pump, CPU watervlock, Y into both rads, both rads into res independently. Athlon XP 1800+ (@ 1731 - 150mhz fsb.), on a Asus A7N266-c, and a Radeon 9000 *waiting for RMA'd Saphire 9800 ultra from Newegg)

12-27-2002, 11:08 AM	#3
jtroutma Cooling Savant Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: SLO, CA Posts: 837	Are you looking for good price per performance or are you interested in straight performance? Your solution sounds like it would work just fine in that case. But if you have some money to burn you could go with 3Com 3300 switches and use the matrix uplink between them. Uplink is gigabit and utilizes dedicated uplink channels in the back of the units. They are very pricy and you will be limited to only 96 ports but it is a very fast and good solution. Just thought that I should throw out another option if you are interested. __________________ Athlon64 X2 4200+ @ 2.5Ghz (250FSB x 10) OCZ VX 1GB 4000 @ 250FSB (6-2-2-2 timmings) DFI LANParty nForce4 Ultra-D SCSI Raid 5 x (3) Cheetah 15K HDDs LSI Express 500 (128MB cache) OCZ PowerStream 520W PSU ATI X850XT PE (Stock) DTEK WhiteWater + DTEK Custom Radiator Eheim 1250

12-27-2002, 09:56 PM	#4
BrianW Cooling Savant Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Desert City in California Posts: 631	Response I am very concerned with price, as I am funding this out of pocket. As far as having more bandwith to the servers, I am only using Game servers, no file servers, so I do not really need alot of bandwidth to the servers. If I do get a file server I will probably use trunking to it from the backbone switch. I will have less client support, but could always use 3 port trunks instead of 4 port trunks. I would really appreciate any articles that help with trunking and/or vlan. Thanks again, The community here is a great one, and I am proud to be a part of it. Brian W __________________ Water Cooled Inwin Q500 (Dual Rads: Rad1 = DTEK Pro Core \| Rad2 = Blick Ice Estreme, Hydor L30, Dangerden Maze2, Bay Res Typhoon Reservoir, 1/2 " DD Tygon Thick Wall Hose). Flow: Res, Pump, CPU watervlock, Y into both rads, both rads into res independently. Athlon XP 1800+ (@ 1731 - 150mhz fsb.), on a Asus A7N266-c, and a Radeon 9000 *waiting for RMA'd Saphire 9800 ultra from Newegg)

12-29-2002, 01:01 AM	#6
BrianW Cooling Savant Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Desert City in California Posts: 631	Thanks for the reply. I will just use these switches with regular uplink, until I can afford a more advanced solution. __________________ Water Cooled Inwin Q500 (Dual Rads: Rad1 = DTEK Pro Core \| Rad2 = Blick Ice Estreme, Hydor L30, Dangerden Maze2, Bay Res Typhoon Reservoir, 1/2 " DD Tygon Thick Wall Hose). Flow: Res, Pump, CPU watervlock, Y into both rads, both rads into res independently. Athlon XP 1800+ (@ 1731 - 150mhz fsb.), on a Asus A7N266-c, and a Radeon 9000 *waiting for RMA'd Saphire 9800 ultra from Newegg)

01-18-2003, 08:17 AM	#7
pissboy Cooling Neophyte Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: here Posts: 10	cheap+trunking Ok, I've been running lans with switches that have multilink trunks for a while now. Bay Networks/Nortel 350T switches are very cheap per port and are the one of the fastest 10/100 switches availible. I dont know anythign about the no-name company you're referring to, but I'll bet their switches are built cheaply. The 350T's have 1.5MB of cache for the 16 port models, and I think a little more for the 24's. They do allow multiple multiport trunks, but it is limited to 4-4port trunks per switch. I'm not sure if their 450T's will allow more than that or not, but I usually end up just using 2-16 ports and a 24 port with 2 trunks to the 24, for a total of 40 availible ports. I do have more switches at my disposal, but I've yet to hold a lan where I'd need them. Anyways, they're readily availible on ebay cheap. ~$70-80 for a 16 port, $100ish for a 24 port. You can find them cheaper, usually a buy it now price on the 16 ports is in that range, sometimes you can snag them in the $50's. -pissboy

12-27-2002, 08:55 AM	#2
murray13 Cooling Savant Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Omaha, NE USA Posts: 216	I believe that would work fine as long as all you are looking for is to maximize bandwidth between all 120 end ports. In that setup there is no place for a server with more bandwidth than the rest. If this IS the way you go. Don't just hook up ports 1, 2, 3, 4 to the first switch and 6, 7, 8...etc. Let me know and I'll work out the best configuration for your setup. The reason why you dont hook it up with sequential ports is basically you don't get max thruput. I'll try to find a link to help explain.

04-18-2003, 10:23 PM	#8
BrianW Cooling Savant Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Desert City in California Posts: 631	Ok, I got three new switches. Allied Telesyn AT-8124XL What do you all think about the topology I should implement? Do you still think the overhead for port trunking would still degrade overall network performance? http://www.alliedtelesyn.co.kr/Produ...ets/8124XL.pdf BrianW __________________ Water Cooled Inwin Q500 (Dual Rads: Rad1 = DTEK Pro Core \| Rad2 = Blick Ice Estreme, Hydor L30, Dangerden Maze2, Bay Res Typhoon Reservoir, 1/2 " DD Tygon Thick Wall Hose). Flow: Res, Pump, CPU watervlock, Y into both rads, both rads into res independently. Athlon XP 1800+ (@ 1731 - 150mhz fsb.), on a Asus A7N266-c, and a Radeon 9000 *waiting for RMA'd Saphire 9800 ultra from Newegg)

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