Dell Switch Trunking

Hardware Hub Networking
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1

Hello Level1!

I managed to stump myself with some networking. Long story short I am trying to trunk all VLANs from one switch to another, but cannot seem to make it work. One switch is a Dell PowerConnect, the other is a Dell Force10. Same vendor different model, so it should work.

I can see that the connection is active, line state is up, VLANs report they are active, the cable has been tested, but I cant seem to ping from one switch to the other. Any pointers? Steps I missed?

Interface setup: 
console# show interfaces configuration ethernet g23
                                               Flow    Admin     Back   Mdix
Port     Type         Duplex  Speed  Neg      control  State   Pressure Mode
-------- ------------ ------  -----  -------- -------  -----   -------- ----
g23      1G-Combo-C   Full    1000   Enabled  Off      Up      Disabled Auto

Force10#show running-config interface gigabitethernet 0/43
!
interface GigabitEthernet 0/43
 no ip address
 switchport
 vlan-stack trunk
 no shutdown
Switchport setup: 
console# show interfaces switchport ethernet g23
Port : g23
Port Mode: Trunk
Gvrp Status: disabled
Ingress Filtering: true
Acceptable Frame Type: admitAll
Ingress UnTagged VLAN ( NATIVE ): 1
Protected: Disabled
 
Port is member in: 
 
Vlan               Name               Egress rule Port Membership Type 
---- -------------------------------- ----------- -------------------- 
 1                  1                  Untagged          System        
 10           client private            Tagged           Static        
 20           server private            Tagged           Static        
</snip>

Force10#show interfaces switchport gigabitethernet 0/43

Codes:  U - Untagged, T - Tagged
        x - Dot1x untagged, X - Dot1x tagged
        G - GVRP tagged, M - Trunk, H - VSN tagged

Name: GigabitEthernet 0/43
802.1QTagged: True
Vlan membership:
Q       Vlans
M       10,20,<snip>
VLAN setup: 
console# show ip interface vlan 20


  Gateway IP Address        Activity status       Type   
----------------------- ----------------------- -------- 


      IP Address          Type    
----------------------- --------- 
10.0.0.2/16             Static    

Force10# show running-config interface vlan 20
!
interface Vlan 20
 description Server Private
 ip address 10.0.0.9/16
 vlan-stack compatible
 member GigabitEthernet 0/43
 no shutdown
2

I also posted on the Dell forums, you can check that out here:

3

There are two ways of encapsulation, dot1q and sth else. Maybe your 2 switches use different ones?! In cisco switches you sometimes need to use encapsulation dot1q to specify it manually? I’m not sure what the difference between T - Tagged and M - Trunk is. In theory the VLANs should be tagged on that port, which in turn makes it a trunk port. Maybe I’m missing something tho…

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4

To quickly test that out, I wanted to see if the two switches could pass regular tagged traffic. So I removed the trunk and just passed tagged traffic like normal. That ended up working fine, and at that point the problem was solved, so I stopped touching things.

TLDR:
Couldn’t figure it out, worked around the problem instead.

3 Likes