Basic Switch Configuration

De La Salle University – Dasmarinas

College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology

Engineering Department – Computer Engineering

BUILDING A SWITCHED NETWORK WITH REDUNDANT LINKS

Experiment No. 2

Philline Ysabel B. Sy                                            Date Performed: February 8, 2017

CPE 51                                                         Date Submitted: February 15, 2017

Engr. Emmanuel T. Longares

INTRODUCTION

In any application, network continuity is a necessity; and in so doing, a strategy, in the form of redundancy technologies must be implemented. By means of redundancy, a backup is established to take over in any failure. Technically, a single point of failure in the network design is eliminated; instead, a second or succeeding method of access is added. Thus, if anything goes down with the main connection, the network’s processes are uninterrupted, as another connection is available, up and open.

        However, the network design in this application, overall, is critical. Providing redundancy also means creating physical loops in the topology, as two network segments are connected by two or more switches, the traffic is looped around the network, passed back and forth by the switches. To compensate with this, the Spanning Tree Protocol, which eliminates the redundant paths by placing only one switch port in forwarding mode and placing all other ports connected in the same segment in blocking mode, is implemented, repeating the process until only one active path is available to the network destination address. From this, several observations can be surmises - how the root bridge and its selection plays an important role in defining the spanning tree, how modifications on the default configuration values are relevant and overall, how a good network design defines the total stability and reliability of the network.

DATA GATHERED

Step 1: Cable the network

1. Connect Host 1 to Switch 1 Fast Ethernet port Fa0/7, using a straight-through Ethernet cable.
2. Connect Host 2 to Switch 2 Fast Ethernet port Fa0/8, using a straight-through Ethernet cable.
3. Connect Switch 1 Fast Ethernet port Fa0/1 to Switch 2 Fast Ethernet port Fa0/1, using a crossover Ethernet cable.
4. Create a redundant link between the switches by connecting Switch 1 Fast Ethernet port Fa0/4 to Switch 2 Fast Ethernet port Fa0/4, using a crossover Ethernet cable.

What typically undesirable traffic pattern have you created by using the two crossover cables between the two switches?

By using two crossover cables between two switches, a loop is created.

Predict: What do you think the switches will do to keep this from becoming a problem?

It will include blocking one of the ports to break the loop while keeping the physical connection.

Step 2: Configure the switches

1. Establish a terminal emulation session to Switch 1 from Host 1.
2. Configure the switch hostname, passwords, interface VLAN 1 IP address, and subnet mask on Switch 1.
3. Save the configuration.
4. Establish a terminal emulation session to Switch 2 from either Host 1 or Host 2.
5. Configure the switch hostname, passwords, interface VLAN 1 IP address, and subnet mask on Switch 2.
6. Save the configuration.

Step 3: Configure the hosts

1. Configure each host to use an IP address in the same network as the switches.
2. Configure each host to use the same subnet mask as the switches.

Why is no default gateway specified for this network?