daisy-chaining 3548 and 3560 switches

Apr 11, 2006 1 Replies

Hi, I'm interested in knowing if there's a "best" way to daisy chain (not stack) a couple of switches.



We have a: Cisco 3548 (48-port 10/100 + 4 gigabit GBIC's), and a Cisco 3560 (48-port 10/100/1000 + 4 gigabit SFP's).



Right now there's fiber from a 3548 GBIC back to our backbone switch. I could do one of these:


  1. Interconnect a 3548 GBIC with a 3560 SFP port. The 3560 would be downstream.
  2. Interconnect a 3548 GBIC with a 3560 regular 10/100/1000 port (cheaper; don't need an SFP).
  3. Run the fiber to a 3560 SFP port instead, and make the 3548 be downstream from the 3560, using method 1 or 2 above.

Are the SFP ports on the 3560 "better" than the regular 10/100/1000 baseT ports, in terms of bandwidth to the internal switch fabric? Is there some reason why the 3560 would a better connection to the backbone? Assume similar traffic on each switch.



If it doesn't really make any difference, I can just buy the cheapest sort of interconnects that will work, and I don't have to mess with fiber adapters, an extra SFP adapter, etc.



Thanks, Dan



1.Since the 3560 is a more powerful and more feature-rich switch, I would place it upstream of the 3548. That way it may be possible to apply some of the 3560 feature like DHCP snooping to traffic from the 3548.

  1. I would connect the 3560 using the SFP fiber portsto your core switch

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