EtherChannel

BY: CHRISTIAN B. ESPINA

Below is a sample configuration to help with configuring and identifying the components of
EtherChannel. Included are some notes to help with identifying options when configuring both PaGP
and LACP EtherChannels. The options will provide you additional functionality such as configuring
channel groups, trunks, and enabling PAgP vs LACP for both explicit use vs auto-negotiation.
ETHERCHANNEL

EtherChannel provides incremental trunk speeds between Fast

Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. EtherChannel
combines multiple Fast Ethernet up to 800Mbps, Gigabit Ethernet
up to 8Gbps , and 10 Gigabit Ethernet up to 80Gbps.
ETHERCHANNEL IN CISCO

EtherChannel is a port link aggregation technology developed by Cisco, which provides fault-tolerant high-speed
links between Switches, Routers, and Servers. EtherChannel technology allows multiple physical Ethernet links (Fast
Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet) to combine into one logical channel.
EtherChannel technology allows grouping of several physical Ethernet links (Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, or 10
Gigabit Ethernet) to create one logical Ethernet link for the purpose of providing fault-tolerance and high-speed
links between switches, routers and servers.
EtherChannel technology can be used to increase the bandwidth between two devices that support EtherChannel
technology and EtherChannel technology provides automatic recovery for the loss of a link by redistributing the load
across the remaining links. EtherChannel technology allows automatic redirection of network traffic from the failed
link to the remaining links in EtherChannel.
An EtherChannel consists of individual Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit links bundled into a single
logical link. The EtherChannel provides full-duplex bandwidth up to 800 Mbps (Fast EtherChannel FEC) or 8 Gbps
(Gigabit EtherChannel) or 10 Gbps (10-Gigabit Etherchannel 10 GEC) between Switches, Routers and Servers.
The main advantages of EtherChannel technology is that it allows load sharing of traffic among the links in the
channel as well as redundancy in the event that one or more links in the EtherChannel fail.
EtherChannel is a Cisco Copyrighted term and the term which industry adopted is "Link Aggregation".
 There are two protocols used for negotiating EtherChannel and Link Aggregation. We can configure Etherchannel
in three ways in Cisco Switches.
Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) - Cisco Proprietary protocol
IEEE Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP) - Industry Standard
Manual Etherchannel Configuration - Without using any negotiation protocol listed above
The Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) can be used for EtherChannel
negotiation. Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) is a Cisco proprietary protocol. Therefore PAgP can be used to
negotiate EtherChannels only between Cisco switches.
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is an industry standard defined in IEEE 802.3AD. Using Link Aggregation
Control Protocol (LACP), Cisco switches can negotiate Link Aggregation with switches from different vendors
that support 802.3AD protocol.
Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) or Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is used by a Switch to learn the
identity of partners, capability of partners and the interface properties and capabilities. Port Aggregation
Protocol (PAgP) or Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) groups similarly configured interfaces into a single
logical link present the group toSpanning Tree Protocol (STP)as a single switch port.