Can I bind/combine switches of network?

[bob]

I plan to move the network cabling from 10base2 to Cat5. I would like to have a 10/100 Nway switch in every office, uplinked to a 10/100 Nway switch in the server room.
Can this be done? I heard that I can't bind/cascade switches. I wonder that why? A switch does segment the network. I think that, Segmenting is harmless for your network PC - server. Am I right? Where can I get more information?

Any help from you readers.

[Jason]

switches can be cascaded however if you are using VLAN's. The port you are using to uplink must support VLAN trunking. The issue you may run into is a bandwidth issue. with 23 100MBPS Ports all going up and thru a single 100MBPS ports. you may have some dropped packets if you overrun the buffers.

Please visit this first:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/si/casi/ca3500xl/index.shtml
The another option is to run fiber cable as your backbone instead of copper.
Also these switches allows "clustering" of up to 8 switches which allows you to manage all of the switches using single IP address.

[michel]

Well, I think fiber optic is not required. The LAN runs without a switch using coaxial cable smoothly. That means bandwith is actually enough. The LED's on a hub show load seldom exceeding 30...60% and there are only the few usual collisions. I want to move the cabling for easiness to trouble shoot and extending the network. And I the switches used for to optimize network traffic. Overall, fine But with 10Mbit also in the future.