Defining Trunks; Important Considerations - 3Com corebuilder 3500 Implementation Manual

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HAPTER RUNKING

Defining Trunks

To define a trunk, you specify the ports that you want to be in the trunk.
Important If you have already defined other trunks on your system, you cannot
Considerations select ports that are part of an existing trunk.
Devices that you use in a trunking configuration must have the
hardware to support the trunking algorithm.
You can define more than one trunk at a time, which saves having to
reboot the system after each trunk definition.
When you define a trunk, you specify ports and characteristics
associated with the trunk (including Gigabit Ethernet flow control).
You can specify them all in one operation.
define
When you create the trunk, the entire trunk assumes the current port
characteristics, such as the FDDI station mode [dual attach station
(DAS) or single attach station (SAS)].
Trunk names can be no longer than 32 characters.
3Com recommends that the TCMP state be . But devices can
enabled
operate without TCMP. When TCMP is not in effect on a
point-to-point link, its configuration validation is simply absent.
If your system has more than one media type (for example, FDDI, Fast
Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet), you are prompted for a media type
before you are prompted for the trunk information.
Trunk names become the port labels when you display information on
the trunks.
All ports in the trunk are set to the selected operating mode
(half-duplex or full-duplex).
Each Gigabit Ethernet module that you install takes up one of the
switch's four trunk resources (but does not itself constitute a trunk). If
you have two or more Gigabit Ethernet modules, you can trunk them
together to free up switch trunk resources. For example, if you install
three Gigabit Ethernet modules, the switch allows only one additional
trunk. But if you trunk the Gigabit Ethernet modules, the switch
supports three additional trunks after you reboot.
If you add a Gigabit Ethernet module to a switch that has four trunks
already defined, the module does not power up, and you receive an
error message.