Ethernet suggestions

[Stephen Partington]

It appears that some buttons were pushed. My initial reading did suggest
rstp was very good to maintain switch to switch redundancy, which is what i
initially thought. Re reading your initial email I am still very curious
about why you were looking to use rstp as a nic to nic design.

On Fri, Oct 4, 2019, 11:48 PM Michael Butash <michael at butash.net> wrote:

> I really don't get any anyone in their right mind would do this other than
> an experiment to say they can/did.  Host ethernet chaining is not what
> (Rapid) Spanning Tree Protocol was designed for, and with modern (or old)
> switching, there is no reason to.  As a network engineer for 20 years, it
> offends certain sensibilities as something you should never do.
>
> There is a reason people have been using ethernet hubs/switches for 30
> years now - speed and simplicity.  If you walked into any sort of
> enterprise or business with any network knowledge and proposed that,
> someone might just fire you.
>
> Switches are designed to forward quickly and effectively, some as low as
> 350 down to 8 nano seconds these days with special nics,  Even a server cpu
> bridging at a kernel level will *never* do so as quickly as that,
> particularly cumulative latency in a chain.  Servers that do have more than
> one nic certainly aren't intended to be daisy-chained, rather they home
> each nic to multiple vlan segments, or they aggregate nics as
> active/passive or active/active link aggregation to multiple switches
> (redundancy).  Hosts as a rule should NEVER talk spanning-tree, only switch
> to switch.
>
> Just... don't ever chain hosts like that, particularly not if said client
> is paying you for a network solution.  Get a switch or multiple with as
> many ports as you need.  Ebay is always good for slightly older kit, and
> just get a spare to keep around just in case.
>
> If you're *that* interested in networking to build that sort of science
> experiment, pick up a CCNA switching book to learn why you're barking up
> the wrong tree.
>
> -mb
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 6:34 PM Stephen Partington <cryptworks at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I am still wrapping my head around why this was the root design.
>>
>> I am not sure what gains you have vs having a pair of switches for
>> redundancy. time to research RSTP.
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 3:34 PM kelly stephenson <stephenson2773 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Looking for some networking advice from the group.
>>>
>>> The system I have has several devices connected in a ring configuration
>>> using one Ethernet port IN and one Ethernet port out.  The system uses RSTP
>>> for loop free operation.  The idea is simplicity for installation, you just
>>> unplug and plugin a new device in the ring plus you gain redundancy, if one
>>> Ethernet cable breaks you still have another one.  This works but my client
>>> has never had more then a half dozen devices on the network yet.
>>> When I say devices just imagine very large machines.  The number of
>>> devices could be as many as 100 in the ring or network.  Everything I've
>>> researched on RSTP says over 8 devices and its not effective/efficient so
>>> I'm researching other Ethernet failover/failsafe/redundant solutions.
>>> So, the local network configuration needs to scale up to 100 devices,
>>> have redundancy, and low latency for M2M control.  Any thoughts?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Kelly
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
>> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
>>
>> Stephen
>>
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