From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Default Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:58:53 +0000 Subject: Re: [LARTC] Linux bridging and cascaded switches Message-Id: <4679950D.8080102@advaita.sytes.net> List-Id: References: <925A849792280C4E80C5461017A4B8A210B8D8@mail733.InfraSupportEtc.com> In-Reply-To: <925A849792280C4E80C5461017A4B8A210B8D8@mail733.InfraSupportEtc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: lartc@vger.kernel.org Hi Greg Scott wrote: > More fundamentally, can I cascade these switches and my bridge/firewall > this deep? How do the Internet router and internal servers find each > others' MAC addresses when they are 4 "hops" (OSI layer 2 hops) > separated? Or am I making this too complicated? > > i was taught that you should have no more than 4 switches between any two LAN nodes, so this should work. STP should be ok, but not needed until you have some redundant links between bridge/fw and core switches (if you have more core switches, you would probably like to use more links for redundancy). [you would probably want the core switch to become STP root then.. ] when switch doesn't know destination it works like hub, so at the beginning your network will be flooded with frames and this way all switches will learn mac addresses no matter how many hops. (frame will be broadcasted to all corners of LAN). servers and router will search for each other's MAC using ARP broadcasts, which will get to every node in LAN (if you don't filter them out : ) ). Therefore they will certainly find each other. (( 4 switches add constant delay to your traffic that i think you would like to avoid. if you could make internet router a firewall (you probably can't : ) ), that would remove 2 layers of bridging, would be more simple and allow more control. servers--distribution_switch--core_switch--router/firewall | internet switch )) >> Internal---User---Core-----Firewall---Internet---Internet router >> Servers switch switch (Bridged) switch (and default GW for >> internal servers) >> > > Thanks > > - Greg > ___________________________________ S pozdravom / Best regards John Default __________________________________ _______________________________________________ LARTC mailing list LARTC@mailman.ds9a.nl http://mailman.ds9a.nl/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lartc