Hands-on lab network diagram page 657

[pottse]

Just wondering: What is the purpose of the links between the 2950 switches shown connected to Lab_B and Lab_C in the network diagram on page 657? I've built this thing in Packet tracer and played with it a bit, and I can see no purpose to these links, please advise.

Thanks,

Elmer

[Big Evil]

You could have many things with this mate.
Reduancy, back door links, traffic priority or even just for fun to see how traffic is sent over from hosts b and c, and how is determines the paths.

HTH.

[pottse]

Thanks for the reply. I went ahead and built the thing, added a couple of hosts, and configured 2 VLANS behind each switch, and configured each router ethernet link as a dot1q sub-interface to handle one VLAN/default gateway each. Then I tested and observed packet flow between hosts on separate VLAN's. The traffic flow was indeed worth seeing, as it "went 'round the horn" twice, once at layer 2, and again at layer 3, to get from one VLAN to the other.

Thanks again,

Elmer

[Big Evil]

Great yeah. That kinda thing makes my day!
Cisco = fun! Even at 3:00am after a 14 hour day! LOL...