I am trying to work out a way to add some redundancy to my network, by
putting my switches in a ring.
I have a pair of CARP'd routers, each with 2 GigE interfaces, and the
ability to add more on PCI-E cards. I have a number of switches with
24x100Mb ports and 2 GigE uplink ports. Currently the topology is flat,
with the GigE backbone having a router on each end, and the switches in
a line between them. The spare GigE interface on each router is used for
the pfsync link.
I would like to fine a way to join the two ends of the ring together, so
that a failure of any one switch will mean that only the machines on the
100Mb ports of that particular switch are affected. To do this I need to
be able to connect the routers in both directions round the ring, and so
have two GigE ports acting as if a three port switch almost, with the
ring in each direction and the carp/vlan/ip interfaces of the router.
I'm not sure if trunk or bridge are more appropriate in this case, and
if I were to use trunk I'm not sure if I would want broadcast or not.
Can anyone help me out of the confusing hole I've dug myself into?
SD
