I have bought 2 Netgear GS784T switches and need to connect them via CAT6 cable, but at the same time, need to trunk them or set up a VLAN?

I've never done any kind of trunking before or set up any VLAN's, could someone please help me with this?

Thanks,
Douglas

I'm not at all familiar with those particular switches so can't give you detailed instructions on trunking or VLAN setup.

However, for the equipment I have worked with I can tell you it's not that tough.

First with regard to trunking. Are you trunking the two switches to another switch (core switch for example) or are you planning on trunking the one to the other? Note, in the second case, you're actually daisy chaining and the bandwidth will aggregate. Which is to say, the bandwidth usage on the switch farthest out will be added to the next one in the chain.

I would suspect you got some kind of manual, or one is available on the internet which should give detailed instructions on how to trunk. I know with a Cisco, you would enable dot1q trunking mode on the ports on each side of the trunk. With the Baystacks we're now using you simply pick your port, assign it as a trunk. If you're going to use two ports in MLT mode you would then of course make it an MLT.

As for the VLAN's, again, RTFM. You always have to create your VLAN first and then best practice is to assign it a name (preferably the network....ie: VLAN 1, name Net 1 and so on).

Then, you assign the VLAN's to the ports.

If you're going to have multiple VLAN's on each switch, you'll want to assure you have all VLAN's added to the trunk. The trunk ports should be "tag all" with the base VLAN being your baseband network.

In a larger network with multiple VLAN's it's always best practice to create a management VLAN on which the network equipment resides. For example we'll use VLAN 1 (Net 1). The only thing that should reside on this subnet should be network equipement and all switch/router IP's should be on this subnet. Now, say you have 3 other VLAN's on each switch:
VLAN 2 = Net 2
VLAN 3 = Net 3
VLAN 4 = Net 4

As per my above example, your baseband subnet would be 1. Your trunk ports would look as follows:

PVID = 1
Allowed VLAN's = 1, 2, 3, 4
Tag all

This way, all traffic (VLAN's) are passed on the trunk port. VLAN 1 is only for interswitch and management communication.

douglash why do you think you need vlans?
Just because you trunk doesn't mean you vlan.

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Depends on what he means by trunking , everyone seems to interpret this differently. In a cisco network terminalogy it is all about vlans and the ability to run multiple vlans across a single link which is called trunking .