Dynamic trunking and etherchannel best practices?

configt · ‎05-18-2010

I am finding conflicting information about best practices with dynamic trunking and etherchannels formation and would like to know generally what is considered best path these days. In older documentation Cisco has recommended you set trunk ports and etherchannels to autonegotiate instead of hard coded to "on". Is this still the case?

Most peers I have asked seem to lean towards setting these to "on" on both sides now instead of using the auto negotiate portion. Thoughts?

vvasisth · ‎05-18-2010

I would recommend using Mode "on" it works like a charm in every scenario.

Regards,

Varun

Jon Marshall · ‎05-18-2010

configt wrote:

I am finding conflicting information about best practices with dynamic trunking and etherchannels formation and would like to know generally what is considered best path these days. In older documentation Cisco has recommended you set trunk ports and etherchannels to autonegotiate instead of hard coded to "on". Is this still the case?

Most peers I have asked seem to lean towards setting these to "on" on both sides now instead of using the auto negotiate portion. Thoughts?

I would also recommend setting to on and also disabling DTP ie. "switchport nonegotiate" which means your trunk link can come up quicker without having to wait on DTP to negotiate the link.

Jon