Hello all ethernet gurus,
Currently I have two offices connected with a single G.SHDSL link over a leased line, the link operates at 2.3 Mbps which is a good result with this old cable having length of appr. 6 km (~20000 ft).
Now I'm trying to increase the (total) link speed, and one way would be using eg. 4 lines with 2.3 Mbps each, with similar cheap consumer-class(* modems, and combine these links with port trunking (a.k.a link aggregation?) in ethernet switches.
Now, the problem: The connection is mostly used by a single computer at a time, to connect to a file servers etc located at the main office. The following citation is from Allied Telesyn's AT-FS750/16 manual:
"---- A port trunk always sends packets from a particular source to a particular destination over the same link within the trunk. A single link is designated for flooding broadcasts and packets of unknown destination.
----"
How I see this, it would effectively keep one line fully used, and the other lines free, since there would be only two machines communicating with each other.
**** Is anyone aware of ethernet switches that I could use to overcome this limitation?In other words, switches that would effectively use all the (slow) lines in a port trunk also while there are only two computers communicating with each other?
****What I'm looking for is preferably a lower-end (less than $500 each) switch with 8 to 16 ports, not a huge modular system costing thousands of dollars.
*) I would prefer using as cheap terminal equipment as possible, since in this area lightning strikes breaking any equipment connected to public telephone network cables are far too common :-(Regards, Timo