Various redundancy solutions are available for networking two switches, including the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is less effective, and better options such as the Virtual Port Channel (VPC), or stacking. Cisco brings together Al, automation, and security into one unified architecture—built to simplify operations, scale intelligently, and protect every connection. Cisco AI Assistant combines the latest generative AI technology with our expertise to responsibly guide and inform the decisions you make. In this tech paper, you will learn about the key protocols for building a redundant network and discover—based on five examples—how to design highly available three-tier or two-tier networks using LANCOM products. This paper is part of the series “switching solutions“. Multiple strategies can be applied to prevent the redundant connections from forwarding layer 2 frames in. What I'd like to know is: if I buy two Layer 3 switches such as the SG550X, what is the best way to configure redundancy to the servers they're connected to? The best option I found was to stack the switches and configure LAG groups that the servers can connect to with teamed NICs, one cable to. The Cisco implementation of TCP header compression is an adaptation of a program developed by the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) as part of UCB's public domain version of the UNIX operating system. Network redundancy provides multiple paths for traffic so that network communications remain functional even during a failure. A network failure can occur due to a faulty device/link or a network attack (e., DDoS, man-in-the-middle attacks, ARP spoofing, etc.