[c-nsp] Cisco 3560 to Dell 6248 Trunking?

[Curtis Doty]

10:50am Brett Looney said:

>> Has anyone ever gotten trunking working between a
>> 3560 and Dell 6248 or similar?  The Dell seems only
>> to support GVRP in comparison to Cisco's VTP.
>> Since the 3560 doesn't support GVRP I think I'm out
>> of luck, but I'm hoping someone here has figured out
>> a kludge to get this working.
>
> I've had trunking working between Cisco and Dell switches before. You can configure trunking manually on either end - you don't need VTP/GVRP to build a trunk. For example:
>
> 	interface GigabitEthernet 1/0/1
> 	 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
> 	 switchport mode trunk
> 	 switchport trunk vlan allowed 1-50
>
> Obviously you'd need to define the VLANs manually on each end for this to work.

Since explicit settings are better in this situation, don't forget to 
disable DTP grunge...

          switchport nonegotiate

However, the kicker will be properly connecting your spanning trees. Since 
Cisco prefers a separate spanning tree per-vlan, and the Dell prefers one 
spanning tree for all vlans. The way out of this mess is to use MST.