EtherChannel Tutorial
January 17th, 2014 Go to comments
EtherChannel is the technology which is used to combine several physical links between
switches or routers into one logical connection and treat them as a single link. Let’s take an
example to see the benefits of this technology:
Suppose your company has two switches connecting with each other via a FastEthernet link
(100Mbps):
Your company is growing and you need to transfer more than 100 Mbps between these
switches. If you only connect other links between the two switches it will not work because
Spanning-tree protocol (STP) will block redundant links to prevent a loop:
To extend the capacity of the link you have two ways:
+ Buy two 1000Mbps (1Gbps) interfaces
+ Use EtherChannel technology to bundle them into a bigger link
The first solution is expensive with the new hardware installed on the two switches. By using
EtherChannel you only need some more unused ports on your switches:
EtherChannel bundles the physical links into one logical link with the combined bandwidth
and it is awesome! STP sees this link as a single link so STP will not block any links!
EtherChannel also does load balancing among the links in the channel automatically. If a link
within the EtherChannel bundle fails, traffic previously carried over the failed link is carried
over the remaining links within the EtherChannel. If one of the links in the channel fails but at
least one of the links is up, the logical link (EtherChannel link) remains up.
EtherChannel also works well for router connections:
When an EtherChannel is created, a logical interface will be created on the switches or routers
representing for that EtherChannel. You can configure this logical interface in the way you
want. For example, assign access/trunk mode on switches or assign IP address for the logical
interface on routers…
Note: A maximum of 8 Fast Ethernet or 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports can be grouped together
when forming an EtherChannel.
There are three mechanisms you can choose to configure EtherChannel:
+ Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP)
+ Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)
+ Static (“On”)
LACP is the IEEE Standard (IEEE 802.3ad) and is the most common dynamic ether-
channel protocol, whereas PAgP is a Cisco proprietary protocol and works only between
supported vendors and Cisco devices. All ports in an EtherChannel must use the same
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protocol; you cannot run two protocols on two ends. In other words, PAgP and LACP are not
compatible so both ends of a channel must use the same protocol.
The Static Persistence (or “on” mode) bundles the links unconditionally and no negotiation
protocol is used. In this mode, neither PAgP nor LACP packets are sent or received.
(http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk213/
technologies_tech_note09186a0080094714.shtml)
Next we will learn more about the three EtherChannel mechanisms above.
Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP)
PAgP dynamically negotiates the formation of a channel. There are two PAgP modes:
Responds to PAgP messages but does not aggressively negotiate a PAgP
Auto EtherChannel. A channel is formed only if the port on the other end is set to
Desirable. This is the default mode.
Port actively negotiates channeling status with the interface on the other end of the
Desirable
link. A channel is formed if the other side is Auto or Desirable.
The table below lists if an EtherChannel will be formed or not for PAgP:
PAgP Desirable Auto
Desirable Yes Yes
Auto Yes No
Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP)
LACP also dynamically negotiates the formation of a channel. There are two LACP modes:
Responds to LACP messages but does not aggressively negotiate a LACP
Passive
EtherChannel. A channel is forms only if the other end is set to Active
Port actively negotiates channeling with the interface on the other end of the link. A
Active
channel is formed if the other side is Passive or Active
The table below lists if an EtherChannel will be formed or not for LACP:
LACP Active Passive
Active Yes Yes
Passive Yes No
In general, Auto mode in PAgP is the same as Passive mode in LACP and Desirable mode is
same as Active mode.
Auto = Passive
Desirable = Active
Static (“On”)
In this mode, no negotiation is needed. The interfaces become members of the EtherChannel
immediately. When using this mode make sure the other end must use this mode too because
they will not check if port parameters match. Otherwise the EtherChannel would not come up
and may cause some troubles (like loop…).
Note: All interfaces in an EtherChannel must be configured identically to form an
EtherChannel. Specific settings that must be identical include:
+ Speed settings
+ Duplex settings
+ STP settings
+ VLAN membership (for access ports)
+ Native VLAN (for trunk ports)
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+ Allowed VLANs (for trunk ports)
+ Trunking Encapsulation (ISL or 802.1Q, for trunk ports)
Note: EtherChannels will not form if either dynamic VLANs or port security are enabled on
the participating EtherChannel interfaces.
In the next part we will learn how to configure EtherChannel on switch/router interfaces.
EtherChannel Configuration
To assign and configure an EtherChannel interface to an EtherChannel group, use the
channel-group command in interface mode:
channel-group number mode { active | on | {auto [non-silent]} | {desirable [non-silent]} |
passive}
For example we will create channel-group number 1:
Switch(config-if)#channel-group 1 mode ?
active Enable LACP unconditionally
auto Enable PAgP only if a PAgP device is detected
desirable Enable PAgP unconditionally
on Enable Etherchannel only
passive Enable LACP only if a LACP device is detected
If a port-channel interface has not been created before using this command, it will be created
automatically and you will see this line: “Creating a port-channel interface Port-channel 1″.
In this example, we will create an EtherChannel via LACP between SwA & SwB with the
topology shown below:
SwA Configuration SwB Configuration
//Assign EtherChannel group 1 to fa0/0 and //Assign EtherChannel group 2 to fa0/5 and
fa0/1 and set Active mode on them fa0/6 and set Passive mode on them
SwA(config)#interface range fa0/0 – 1 SwB(config)#interface range fa0/5 – 6
SwA(config-if-range)#channel-group 1 mode SwB(config-if-range)#channel-group 2 mode
active passive
Creating a port-channel interface Port-channel Creating a port-channel interface Port-channel
1 2
//Next configure the representing port-channel //Next configure the representing port-channel
interface as trunk interface as trunk
SwA(config)#interface port-channel 1 SwB(config)#interface port-channel 2
SwA(config-if)#switchport trunk SwB(config-if)#switchport trunk encapsulation
encapsulation dot1q dot1q
SwA(config-if)#switchport mode trunk SwB(config-if)#switchport mode trunk
That is all the configuration for the EtherChannel to work well on both switches. We can
verify with the “show etherchannel <port-channel number> port-channel” or “show
etherchannel summary” command.
SwA# show etherchannel 1 port-channel
Port-channels in the group:
----------------------------
Port-channel: Po1
Age of the Port -channel = 0d:00h:02m:37s
Logical slot/port = 2/1 Number of ports = 2
GC = 0x00010001 HotStandBy port = null
Port state = Port-channel Ag -Inuse
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Protocol = LACP
Port security = Disabled
Ports in the Port-channel:
Index Load Port EC state No of bits
------+------+------+------------------ +-----------
0 00 Fa0/0 Active 0
0 00 Fa0/1 Active 0
Time since last port bundled: 0d:00h:02m:27s Fa0/1
The “show etherchannel number port-channel” command can be used to display
information about a specific port channel (in this case port-channel 1). From the command
above we can see Port-channel 1 consists of Fa0/0 & Fa0/1 and they are in Active state.
SwA# show etherchannel summary
Flags: D - down P - bundled in port-channel
I - stand -alone s - suspended
H - Hot -standby (LACP only)
R - Layer3 S - Layer2
U - in use f - failed to allocate aggregator
M - not in use, minimum links not met
u - unsuitable for bundling
w - waiting to be aggregated
d - default port
Number of channel-groups in use: 1
Number of aggregators: 1
Group Port-channel Protocol Ports
------+------------- +-----------
+-----------------------------------------------
1 Po1(SU) LACP Fa0/0(P) Fa0/1(P)
The “show etherchannel summary” can be used to simply display one line of information per
port-channel. In this case we learn from the last line that Group 1 uses LACP. This is a Layer
2 EtherChannel (symbolized by “SU”, in which “S” means “Layer2″ & “U” means this port-
channel is up.
EtherChannel Load-Balancing
EtherChannel load-balances traffic among port members of the same channel. Load balancing
between member interface is based on:
+ Source MAC address
+ Destination MAC address
+ Source IP Address
+ Destination IP Address
+ Combinations of the four
Note: Some old switch/router flatforms do not support all the load-balancing methods above.
To configure load-distribution method, use the command port-channel load-balance under
global configuration mode. For example to load-balance based on destination MAC use the
command:
Router(config)#port-channel load-balance dst-mac
How the router/switch load-balances traffic among member interface is out of the scope of
this article. For more information about EtherChannel load-balancing please visit
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk213/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094714.sht
ml#topic1.
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