managed switch with an unmanaged switch

[adrianDee]

I got a slight dilemma

one semi managed switch that supports a variety of things including trunking

now i want to trunk the two GB ports into an unmanaged GB switch
so

[switch1]====[switch2]

switch1 is the managed switch2 is the unmanaged one i am not 100% sure this will work though as i might have a feed back loop or would it be best to stuff a managed switch in place of the unmanaged one?

the managed switch is a netgear FS726T

[Fubarian]

does the netgear have spanning tree? If it doesn't, your assumption is correct, you will create a feedback loop.

Any particular reason why you want to use two ports together?

[adrianDee]

yeah the FS26T has spanning tree, sounds totally mad but its meant for a DIY grid computing lab, the network will consist of 1 SBS 2003 primary DC, 1 2003 backup DC, 1 Mac OS X server backup DC + Xgrid controller, 2 or 3 win xp workstations and about 5 or 6 mac os x workstations.

I'll have look at what the netgear can do :)

[se7en]

If you have the money a managed switch is always the way to go, but the qustion I would have is why? You are running a GB Backbone between the 2 switches, is having a trunked line going to give you what you want? are all of your servers running GB Ethernet? I'm not sure I could easily be convinced that there would be a noticable gain in performance just by increasing the bandwidth between the 2 switches in such a small network

[Fubarian]

not necessarily. Don't confuse small with unused.

[se7en]

not necessarily. Don't confuse small with unused.

I'm not confused, but Lets look at it this way, He is going to have at most 11 computers running at any 1 given moment in time, Assuming that they are all running GB over a switched network, he would have to be transfering very large amounts of data from multiple machines, to a single machines, all at the same time, and that single machine would have to be on the other switch to see any real difference. Otherwise, if he is transfering data from multiple machines to other multiple machines, I don't realisticaly see a performance gain. I would also sugest making sure you force Full Duplex if possible.

[Fubarian]

my point was initial info wasn't provided to say if it was really needed or not other than its a test environment. Typical network, no, it is not needed ...now add 500+mb cad files or even better, huge amounts of uncompressable data going all directions. Its a test environment, so why not stress the shiz out of it? Or you could really have some fun and see how a grid works under a multicast storm ...