FEC and 802.3AD

[a.diot]

Hi all ,

Is FEC (fast ether channel) (Pagp) compatible with the 802.3ad IEEE specification

or is it a cisco feature only compatible with cisco?

In other words can i aggregate fast ethernet links cisco facing another switch

or server working in 802.3ad

[Prashanth Krishnappa]

We support 802.3ad(LACP) on most Cisco switches now. What switches do you have?

[a.diot]

thanks for your answer , i've got HP2524 switch.

Could you please tell me which ios do i need and how to config 802.3ad with

cisco switch?

Is it automatic?

[konigl]

EtherChannel, Fast EtherChannel, Gigabit EtherChannel are Cisco-proprietary link aggregation. Originally started out on the Kalpana EtherSwitches; then Cisco acquired Kalpana.

IEEE 802.3ad is standards-based link aggregation. The rest of the networking industry saw a good idea, and made it their own. Cisco is supporting this standard now, but is not necessarily making this support retroactive to all Catalyst switches.

My personal experiences trying to mix FEC and 802.3ad showed that they are not compatible. I tried to do FEC between a Catalyst 2924 XL and a 3Com SuperStack II 3900 switch which uses 802.3ad; it did not work. Also had a customer who wanted to do FEC between a Catalyst 3548 XL and a Foundry Networks FastIron 4802 switch, which also uses 802.3ad; we couldn't get it to work there, either.

Hope this helps.