Bonding Ports

[Danny Guillory Jr]

I am working on a Cata switch, i am working on bonding ports for increased bandwidth (trying to bond 2 1gb interfaces for 2gb of bandwidth)

if i recall coorectly i need to create a channel and then configure both intercaes to use that channel, then tag the channel to a vlan...

been a while but isnt that the gest of it?

[John Blakley]

Yes, you'll create an etherchannel on this switch and an etherchannel on the other side. Those ports will be treated as a single link with STP. You don't want to create an etherchannel on one side and nothing on the other. You'll end up with a loop that will bring the whole network down.

In your switch, you would do something like:

int g1/1

channel-group 1 mode active

int g1/2

channel-group 1 mode active

Those will pair, and then you'll do that on the other side as well. If you're wanting to put an address on these, you'll need to configure each port with "no switchport" before doing your channel group. You'll also need the same exact configuration on each port. Otherwise, the interfaces won't pair.

HTH,
John

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[Jon Marshall]

Danny

Just to add to John's post.

For a particular connection etherchannel always uses the same physical link. The connection can be defined a number of ways depending on the switch capabilities eg. src/dst mac addresses, src/dst IPs, src/dst ports etc. But however it is defined for the same connection the same link is used.

What this means practically is that if there is one connection that needs more than 1Gbps then adding another port and configuring an etherchannel wil make no difference because it will only use one physical link. If, on the other hand, there are multiple connections then etherchannel could indeed help.

Just something to be aware of.

Jon

[Danny Guillory Jr]

great information what i am hoping achieve here is my company deals with LARGE files 2GB to 8GB in size, so by bonding some ports I am looking to solve the network issue of the transfer of files.

** I am aware there are other variables like HDD and and others but from a networking perspective I am looking to port bonding to help move these files a little faster.

[Jon Marshall]

Danny

Just to clarify, if the transfer is between the same two devices then using etherchannel will not help. To be more precise it won't help that specific connection but it may relieve the load by moving other connections to different physical links within the etherchannel.

If the problem though is for transfers between two specific devices then possible solutions are -

1) move them to the same switch where you can utilse the switch fabric which will give you much higher throughput

2) if 1) is not possible then you could purchase a dedicated switch for these transfers and move the relevant servers to that switch

3) 10Gbps is obviously an option but i doubt it would be worth it for just a few data transfers

Jon

[Danny Guillory Jr]

yeah i am connecting the switch and the server to the same cata switch as to use the switch fabric for fast transfers. this transfer is between a server and MAC workstation (ew.....)