Switch Stacking and Trunking

[hevelone]

I am looking at setting up new switches. While looking at how to stack new switches I got to thinking that it could be beneficial to actually set up trunking for vlans this time around. Would there be any benefit to setting up trunking? We currently run about 15 vlans within our network and have never had a need to use trunking. As well the network would include 4 switch stacks and 3 individual switches at remote locations. As well across our network we currently do not have any stacked switches. Will Stacking them make a major difference in our network? 

Please let me know if anyone has any ideas. 

Thank you. 

[alemabrahao]

Physical Stacking helps provide easy management and physical redundancy. Utilizing two physical stacking ports on the back of each switch, a stack can provide for gateway redundancy at layer 3 and dual-homing redundancy at layer 2. Only a single uplink is required to provide connectivity to the stack once all stacking cables are installed.

For more details: https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/Stacking/Switch_Stacks

[PhilipDAth]

There might be a confusion of terms here.  You can only allow VLANs between switches using a trunk (unless you put the entire downstream switch into a single VLAN).

Personally, if you had 15 VLANs, I would be using trunking between your switches.

[hevelone]

Yes, sorry to be less clear on that matter. They are not vlans they are lans under a \23 subnet. With that information though I would assume that when we switch over to the new switches, (we are going to make them all vlans) Trunking would be necessary for the vlans to traverse the network?

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

If all the subnets are in a single VLAN - trunking wont have any impact either way.

Typically you have a subnet per VLAN.

[hevelone]

That answers my question. Thank you for the info.

[JonP]

If you have a singe /23 subnet then as @PhilipDAth says, VLAN trunks wont make a jot of difference. You could split them into VLANs on separate subnets, and that would then mean you would, by necessity have to have some trunk ports in your switches, otherwise your VLANs won't be able to escape the switch.