Link aggregation

[s.kadagathur]

Does the Cisco's etherchannel would confirm to IEEE's 802.3ad like another standard for trunking 802.1Q. The reason I asked this question is we have Nortel Equipment which currently connects to Cisco gear which now does 802.1Q trunking between Nortel and Cisco. Also Cisco supports ISL trunking(proprietory I presume). Also Nortel support similar feature called Muti Link Trunking which is same as Cisco's Etherchannel(please correct me if I am wrong). But the standard is 802.3ad. If we follow on the footsteps how OSI was developed it should support whatever way the vendor would implement and call the same in a different name. Does anyone has connected Nortel and Cisco through link aggregation. Thanks.

[Prashanth Krishnappa]

We have 2 implemetations of etherchannel

1)Cisco Proprietaty PAGP

2)IEEE 802.3ad aka LACP(available in most recent CAT OS/IOS)

LACP is supported in most switches(execptions are XLs and CAT5k). What switches do you have. Here is an example

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/126.html

Regarding truking, we support ISL and IEEE 802.1Q(might depend on hardware/software)

[s.kadagathur]

We have Catalyst 4006 with Sup III and 6509 with Sup III running native IOS. Thanks for the research and the input.

[Prashanth Krishnappa]

IOS for Sup3 in CAT4k does not support LACP yet but will in an IOS release expected late this year/early next year.

Native IOS 12.1(13)E for CAT6k which is now on CCO supports LACP

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/12_1e/swconfig/channel.htm#xtocid7