Livewire with 2 utp cables from 1 switch

WD Legacy Products My Net Networking Devices
1

Hi,

When I plug 2 utp cables from 1 switch into 1 livewire device the switch becomes inaccessible, is this normal? I need to this for a vlan setup I have. Have tried it without and with vlans, but the switch becomes inaccessible in a matter of secons.

thanks in adance

2

Yes, that’s NORMAL because that’s an invalid topology called a “Network Loop.”  Loops will destroy ANY network.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_loop

3

Hi,

thanks for the reply. I’m aware of this and thought the livewire could overcome this (stream it directly to the other side). So the diagram i’ve drawn isn’t possible?

network.png
network.png743×507 6.97 KB

This is how my router is build (bbox2) it’s the bridged one:

4

See, I don’t get that at all.

VLANs are different than what you have drawn.

A VLAN is just a virtual LAN.   A VLAN is not a peice of cable.

A connection on a cable can contain one or more VLANs.   If it has more than one VLAN, one or more of the VLAN’s pakets must be tagged with a a “dot1q” header, or encapsulated in some other way to keep the VLANs distinct… and the devices on both ends must understand those VLAN tags.

Having no knowledge of how this “BBOX” is handling VLAN tagging, I can’t tell you what should work and what shouldn’t.

…  but you have emperically proven that you can’t connect the LiveWire twice to the same switch.