Study Session Number 14! EtherChannel & NIC Teaming #15

Hi Everyone! 

After my day of labbing yesterday I feel I understand STP more than enough now, I think I'm understanding the concepts generally okay but just remembering every bit of the theory - mostly the election processes of these protocols is quite difficult not to get one protocol muddled up with another! I know that this will come to me with time so im not worried about it at all. 

Anyways, enough waffling! today i'm going to learn about EtherChannel.

When talking about EtherChannel it needs to be known that the reason that it exists is due to spanning tree, when configuring EtherChannel essentially what is happening is two interfaces are getting bundled into one interface, why is this useful? In spanning tree ports that aren't being used are set into a blocking state, when this happens that port is no longer sending/receiving data, in a packet tracer this is fine but in a real world environment this could leave loads of ports unused wasting bandwidth and available ports. This all occurs because spanning tree does not support load balancing whereas EtherChannel does support load balancing .


NIC teaming is taking two physical server interface cards and bundling them into one logical interface using one ip address. 


EtherChannel Protocols -
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) - Open standard, both sides of switches negotiate EtherChannel creation, preferred EtherChannel protocol.  

Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) - Cisco's protocol (can only be used on Cisco devices), both sides of switches negotiate EtherChannel creation

Static EtherChannel (Not a Protocol) - Ports are manually configured on both sides to provide EtherChannel. Commands in purple.

REGARDLESS OF WHAT PROTOCOL IS USED BOTH SIDES OF INTERFACE MUST BE CONFIGURED THE SAME. 

Parameters that need to be the same for EtherChannel Config - 
Speed & Duplex 
Access or Trunk mode 
Native VLAN and Allowed VLANs on Trunk 
Access VLAN on Access Ports 

LACP Configuration -
Interface is ether Active or Passive. 
Passive - Passive = Channel wont go on. 
Active - Active = Channel will go on. 
Active - Passive = Channel will go on.
Commands below marked in red.

PAgP Configuration -
Interface is ether Active or Passive. 
Desirable - Desirable = Channel wont go on. 
Auto - Auto = Channel wont on. 
Desirable - Auto = Channel will go on.
Commands below marked in blue.


Terminology - 
EtherChannel - A port channel, LAG Link Aggregation, A link bundle. 
NIC Teaming - Bonding, NIC Balancing, Link Aggregation 

Layer 3 Switch EtherChannel - 
A layer 3 EtherChannel is configured the exact same as a layer 2 one with the only difference being that there is layer 3 interfaces being used instead. This is still done on the switch, the interfaces will be configured as a no switchport then after the port channel interface is created an ip address is assigned to the port channel interface.

Commands - 
FOR PORT CHANNEL TO WORK INTERFACES MUST BE SHUTDOWN FIRST THEN ENTER COMMANDS.

port-channel - Every protocol uses this command (LACP, PAgP and Static)

Create a port channel interface - 
interface range *int*  - *number*
    channel group *number* mode active OR channel group *number* mode desirable OR channel group *number* mode on

Configuring the port channel interface -
show ip int brief - this is to check name of port channel interface
Interface *port channel interface*
    switchport mode trunk 

Configure Layer 3 EtherChannel on Layer 3 Switch - 
interface range *int*  - *number*
    no switchport 
    channel group *number* mode active
interface po1 
    ip address *ip address* *subnet* 
    no shut

THESE CONFIGS NEED TO BE IDENTICAL ON BOTH SIDES OF THE INTERFACES.

Verify - 
show etherchannel summary
show spanning tree vlan - this will show one interface instead of the origional two.

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