Switch To Another Switch; Switch Stacking - D-Link DXS-3600-16S Quick Installation Manual

Switch to another Switch

Another popular configuration is to connect this switch to another switch. This network typography is
considered when one Switch does not have enough ports to cater for all the end nodes in the network. There
is a great deal of flexibility in the type of cabling that can be used to interlink switches.
Two or more switches can also be interlinked using fiber-optic cables or direct-attached cables via the
switch's SFP and SFP+ ports. Lastly two or more switches can also be interlinked using QSFP+ interfaces
supported by the DXS-3600-EM-4QXS optional modules.

Switch Stacking

The DXS-3600-16S supports stacking 4 switches together while being managed by one IP address through
Telnet, the Web User Interface, the RJ-45 console port or through SNMP. This cost effective switch provides
an affordable solution for administrators to upgrade their networks using the DXS-3600-EM-4QXS module to
scale and stack the switches.
• Duplex Chain – The Duplex Chain topology stacks switches together in a chain-link format. Each switch in
a chain is connected to the upper and the lower units, while the upper and the lower switches are not
connected. If there is a break in the chain, then data transfer will obviously be affected.
• Duplex Ring – The Duplex Ring stacks switches in a ring or circle format. Each switch in a chain is
connected to the upper and the lower units, the upper and the lower switches are also connected. This
topology is very resilient due to the fact that if there is a break in the ring, data can still be transferred through
the stacking cables between switches in the stack.
The DXS-3600-EM-4QXS module uses the last two QSFP+ ports to make the following stacking topologies.
The figure below illustrates how switches can be stacked in a Duplex Chain formation using the
DXS-3600-EM-4QXS module.
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