Ethernet triangle?

Soldato
Joined
26 May 2009
Posts
22,173
Hey, simple scenario, two switches, each connected to a router, would the be any benefit to connecting them to each other? In my mind it should help with bottlenecking and load balancing as IIRC TCP/IP will take the shortest available route but it's been a while.
 
I don't think the switches will be clever enough to take advantage as you are not routing. If your switches are rather dumb ones they'll not figure out there is a loop which will give some interesting results..
 
Yes they'll cause a broadcast storm which will kill the network until the loop is removed. Unless it's a managed switch and has spanning tree enabled on it. So give it a go and see then watch as all your port activity lights go mental ;)
 
Our kids at school cause a loopback all the time and it is a pain to have to go around all the school trying to find it...
 
Don't buy bad switches and don't let bad admins look after them, problem solved. If you can't explain what RSTP does or what a BPDU is then you shouldn't be allowed to touch a network with more than 1 switch (or stack) in.
 
Are the ports on the router switch ports or routed ports?

If routed ports it won't cause an issue as they will be on separate broadcast domains. If switch ports then just unplug the second switch from the router and have it just hang off the first switch. This will stop any traffic having to go to the router if just destined for the local subnet.
 
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