Load Balancing Load balancing can be one of the telltale signs that indicate whether a network has been carefully planned or if it has grown up like weeds. By allowing redundant links to effectively double the available bandwidth, load balancing is something that every network should strive to implement. This chapter briefly mentions the most popular alternatives available … [Read more...]
Ethernet Trunks
Ethernet Trunks Most trunk implementations use Ethernet. You can construct Ethernet trunks using Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet, depending upon your bandwidth needs. EtherChannel (defined in greater detail in the sections that follow) creates additional bandwidth options by combining multiple Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet links. The combined links behave as a single … [Read more...]
Cisco Enhancements to Spanning Tree Protocol
Cisco Enhancements to Spanning Tree Protocol The steps to transition to a forwarding state in STP are critical to ensure that the switched network has enough time to propagate a change in the topology. However, in the networking world, 50 seconds is a lot of downtime. In some instances, this 50 seconds may be detrimental because of the disruption of data traffic and should be … [Read more...]