connecting layer 3 switches

[SmawlWun]

Sorry if this questions been asked before but I'm new, and excuse my total ignorance but I've only recently come into the world of switches and know a TINY bit more than everyone else so it's been thrown in my lap.

Right:-
Got a layer 3 4908G-L3 catalyst jobby.
It's got 8 GBIC's which I want to plug our existing 3500's into, to form a gig speed backbone......

I plug them in and nothing happens, ie I can't ping the switch on the other side of the router/switch.
It says that the interfaces are up and working, and I enabled/disabled IP routing to no effect.

I've tried Etherchannels, Bridging groups and all sorts (descriptions off net, so may not be doing it right)
Being an old switch I assigned static IP addresses to the ports so I could ping them and test all the bits were working - all good.....but I know nothing about routing.
Someone suggested the way to do it was a bridging group.

I would like to know
a) what's the best way to get all the switches talking to each other without having to split everything into different subnets and stuff.
b) how do I achieve it?

Beer for anyone that can help

ta

 

[svermill]

Switches are just like hosts. They need to have an IP assigned and should be configured with a valid default gateway. Having said that, if everything is in the same L2 subnet, the default gateway isn't an absolute requirement. Also don't overlook spanning tree. It will be a factor in your L2 topology.

 

[SmawlWun]

Thanks for the post but.....

The router type thing I have is telling me to give all 8 Gigabit ports seperate ip addresses and subnets, which I don't want to do.....I just want to plug 8 switches into it and use it as a backbone.

It's not giving me an option of just one IP adress and gateway (in fact it's not giving me a gateway option at all) and even when it's set up to just broadcast, the ports aren't talking to each other.

It seems to want me to build a routing table of some description but I'm lost at sea.....

I've been through every site/book and handbook I can find but it doesn't mention anything. It tells me the commands to configure the ports but not a situation whereby I can make it do what I want.

Sorry for being a complete newbie

 

[svermill]

Well...

I don't have any experience with the 4908. However, I have plenty of experience with other L3 switches. In general, you can choose to use the router functionality or you can choose not to. You usually have a router command line and a switch command line. Sounds to me as if you are on the router command line but are trying to configure it as a switch. If set up strictly as a L2 device (i.e. a switch), the individual interfaces will not get an IP address assigned. Rather, a single management interface will get an IP and a default gateway should be assigned. Have you searched for any config examples on

http://www.cisco.com?

They're really, really good about that sort of thing.

 

[webnetwiz]

Not knowing your network topology, I'd say you could link all the switches together through fiber, designate the ports as trunks. Setup the Core switch as a VTP server, and all distribution layer switches as clients. Create a VTP domain+password, and configure those settings on the 3500s. you should now have basic L2 functionality.