3Com 4007R Implementation Guide - Page 228

228 CHAPTER 12: TRUNKING s When multiple links are trunked, it can be difficult to manage and troubleshoot individual port-to-port connections if a connectivity problem occurs. This issue may not be of concern in a server farm room. But if you use trunking extensively between wiring closets and data centers, the large number of connections involved and their distributed nature may make their management and troubleshooting difficult. 3Com recommends that you apply trunking only within data center and campus interconnect areas. 3Com uses a three-tiered framework to describe the different functional areas in a local area network (LAN): s Wiring closet - This area provides connections to user workstations. It also includes downlinks into the data center or campus interconnect. s Data center - This area receives connections from wiring closets and campus interconnect areas. Most local server farms reside here. s Campus Interconnect - This area only appears as a separate location in larger networks; smaller networks usually have just wiring closets and data centers. The campus interconnect links campus data centers to each other, and may also include an enterprise server farm and connections to a wide area network. s 3Com recommends that you use trunks to increase network availability in the following scenarios: s Switch-to-switch connections in the data center and campus interconnect areas s Switch-to-server connections in the data center and campus interconnect areas s Downlinks from the data center to the campus interconnect s The trunking feature in 3Com switches is currently a proprietary implementation. No de facto standards exist.