Chapter 3 Customization
Increase Connection Bandwidth through EtherChannels
3-20
User Guide for the Catalyst Express 500 Switches
OL-8122-01
Create, Modify, and Delete an EtherChannel
Prerequisite
All ports in an EtherChannel must have the same characteristics:
•
All are either 10/100 ports or all 10/100/1000 ports. You cannot group a mix
of 10/100 and 10/100/1000 ports in an EtherChannel.
•
All have the same speed and duplex mode settings. A mismatch in speed or
duplex disables the EtherChannel.
•
All are enabled. A disabled port in an EtherChannel is treated as a link failure,
and its traffic is transferred to one of the remaining ports in the EtherChannel.
•
All are applied with the Smartports Switch port role and belong to the same
VLAN. For information about port roles and VLAN memberships, see the
“Optimize Ports through Smartports Port Roles” section on page 3-2
and the
“Change VLAN Memberships” section on page 3-7
.
You can create up to six EtherChannels, and you can configure each EtherChannel
in either:
•
IEEE 802.3ad (LACP) mode—This allows the switch to create one end of the
EtherChannel if the other switch requests it.
•
Static mode—This mode requires you to check that both ends of the
EtherChannel have the same configuration and then to manually create the
EtherChannel.
Use the EtherChannels window (
Figure 3-10
) to create, modify, and delete
EtherChannels. To display this window, choose Configure > EtherChannels
from the device manager menu. See the device manager online help for additional
guidelines and procedures.
