Stacking: Backplane or uplinks?

[Irazmus]

I have recently been told by a supplier that stacking switches using a backplane is old-hat and that the current practice is to stack using the Gig uplinks.

Is this true, and if you were installing a new network which would you choose?

[plexer]

I know that the HP 2650's only have gig and mini gbic ports for this.

Ben

[Geoff]

Here's a whitepaper on how HP Procurves do it:

http://www.hp.com/rnd/pdfs/Stacking_White_Paper.pdf

Pratically though, what I have here is a mix. Some switches are stacked using GigE or fibre. However, several of the 3com units are stacked using 3coms proprietary backplane system.

[plexer]

Thanks for that Geoff nice to read and simple too.

Ben

[Oops_my_bad]

switch fabric 8)

[localzuk]

It depends on the switches you have really. For example D-Link are moving away from the old 'chasis' type switch and favouring their Xstack style of product - these use a proprietory backplane.

Personally, I use HP 2650's with fibre uplinks to the core switch and the switches are stacked for easy management.

The question that is important is 'do I need super speedy backplane speeds or will standard uplinks to a core be suitable'. Everyone has different requirements.

[bishopsgarthstockton]

all my 3com switches are stacked, can some one explain to me what the term 'backplane' means?

[localzuk]

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backplane, it doesn't specifically mention networking but it covers it in general.