Using 2 NICS on 3300

[ralph]

I have a customer that has an MXe II.  It has 2 nics on it.  He would like to connect the second one to a different data switch to give a measure of resiliency.
I hadn't thought of this doing this before (I've no idea why it never occurred to me before now).

Is this doable?   My thought is that the 3300 isn't running spanning tree (or is it) and if you connected the second cable it would crash the network.

Has any one tried this?

Ralph

[v2win]

Yes

Assuming STP or RSTP is enabled on the CPE network

Enable spanning tree

Connect the second NIC

[Mitel100]

When you enable spanning tree on the 3300, make sure that it is done out of hours and the nic1 resets

[bobcheese]

be carefull!! we had an instance recently where STP on the 3300 caused issues with the network RSTP. You shouldn't need to run STP on the 3300 if it is functioning on the network properly STP will shut down one of the links anyway (well thats how I understand it anyway).

[v2win]

I wonder if the 3300 was set to become the root bridge.

[ralph]

I told the customer to go ahead and turn on RSPT  after hours and plug it in.

Thanks for you help.

Ralph

[matthew]

I told the customer to go ahead and turn on RSPT  after hours and plug it in.

Thanks for you help.

Ralph

A customer had a switch fail is now looking to do the same thing. I'm guessing things didn't go into meltdown with your customer when they hooked things up?

[Mattmayn]

This works fine, we do it all the time.