multi-vendor vlan trunking

I would -imagine- that the foundry and hp blade would both support

802.1Q, and that the cisco switches would as well unless they are so old as to support only ISL. The linksys switches, though... most models of them don't support VLANs at all; the ones that do support 802.1Q.

It is pretty much certain that none of the linksys or hp blade switches would support ISL; foundry likes to emulate Cisco features so it just might support ISL, maybe.

Thus the answer is: if it can be done at all with your equipment, it would have to be IEEE 802.1Q.

(Then there is more fun if you want to do link aggregation!)

Hello flamer die,

802.1Q is the protocol you'll have to use. That is the only protocol that is standardized. HP and Cisco supports it. HP blades supports it. And probably Linksys too if it supports vlan trunks.

Please note that on HP switches this is called VLAN tagging, and I don't think you can choose what protocol to use for VLAN's between switches.

You may wish to investigate Foundry Networks Interoperability with Cisco:

Sincerely,

Brad Reese Cisco Tools