Switch Stacking vs Trunking: What’s the Difference?
The performance of Ethernet switches is important in network design, for it will affect the whole network system working. Therefore, to achieve high performance, network managers may use different methods to improve performance of network switches, which cause a hot topic: switch stacking vs trunking. In the article, the knowledge of switch stacking and trunking will be explored as well as the comparison between them. Switch Stacking vs Trunking: Differences in Basic Definition Switching Stacking Switch stacking is to connect two or more stackable switches, usually up to nine, through a stack cable and uses Cisco propriety StackWise protocol. Stacked switches can be regarded as one unit, and use the same IP address. The stack master which contains the saved and running configuration files for the switch stack controls the whole stack units and can be replaced if it fails. And stacking connects the backplane of the switches thus having full backplane speed connectivity between th...