EtherChannel Fundamentals

Slide 1:
Hello. My name is Randy James. I'm pleased to present EtherChannel
concepts and configuration.

Slide 2:
The ability to bundle ports together to achieve higher bandwidth is described
as link aggregation. We're going to look at bundling, or aggregating, ethernet
ports together, and this is referenced under EtherChannel configuration and
operation.

Slide 3:
Perhaps we have even more access layer switches. If these distribution layer
switches are all gigabit ports, every port is a gigabit port, we may run into a
scenario where we want to bundle ports together to get a higher bandwidth.
The reason for this is these switches tend to carry quite a bit of traffic through
them, say there's a link out to the internet, there's a lot of VLANs or
whatever, and perhaps the connection between the two switches becomes a
point of congestion. So, if we can double the bandwidth there, then perhaps
we can alleviate those problems. Though in this particular diagram we have a
distribution layer switch, which has three separate ether channels that it is
using .

Slide 4:
EtherChannel simplifies the design , and, correspondingly, improves
operation when multiple physical interfaces are needed to interconnect
switches. It is possible to have multiple physical interfaces interconnecting
two switches together and, using clever placement of span entry routes and
trunking and VLANs and so on, you can get both ports or multiple ports to be
functional. But with EtherChannel, by bundling these things together, we can
simplify the spanning to design and also improve the operation.

Slide 5:

I think we are all familiar with spanning-tree operation. In the above diagram
we have two 29-60 catalyst switches connected together with crossover
cables using ports FA 01 and FA 02. Once the links come up, spanning-tree
will run ((elect a)) route and the non-route switch will have to block on one of
the ports to prevent a spanning-tree loop - which of course is disastrous in a
layer two environment. The idea is of course that the primary, active link
goes down for some reason, then the redundant link can quickly come up and
carry the user traffic. But in normal operation, what's going to happen is that
user traffic is only going to travel across the link that is active and the one
that has the blocked port is not going to have any user traffic at all. With
either channel, what we can do is bundle the two ports together into a port
channel and this allows spanning-tree to treat the two physical links as one
logical port - and thus, both ports physically can operate on full forwarding
mode.

Slide 6:
Within the EtherChannel, a physical link in a group may go up or down for
various reasons. If a physical link in a group goes down, EtherChannel only
loses the bandwidth that link supplied. If the physical link comes back up, it is
dynamically added back into the EtherChannel. So this is the really important
thing: I could have, for example, four ports bundled together, and for some
reason one of the ports changes, something happens and gets pulled out of
the EtherChannel - the EtherChannel remains functional, it just has less
bandwidth, and when that port comes back up, it gets added back in and we
have the full bandwidth capabilities again. Spanning-tree treats the
EtherChannel bundle as a single switchport, a logical switchport, and adjusts
the spanning-tree cost to reflect the increased bandwidth. It is important to
note that EtherChannel does not actually have to trunk, it may or may not be
configured to trunk, depending on the design needed.

Slide 7:
We aggregate multiple physical Ethernet ports together using the channelgroup command. The result of this is that a single logical interface is created
called a port-channel. So keep that in mind: channel-group command, and we
create a logical interface called a port-channel. On the Cisco Catalyst
switches we can aggregate up to eight 10/100 ports together creating a portchannel with 800 Mbps bandwidth. Interestingly, the literature will indicate
1600 Mbps as the bundle has full-duplex operation. Some of the switches
nowadays are all gigabit ports and if available we can aggregate up to eight
gigabit ports, producing an eight gigabit port logical interface. The idea

behind this is that there should be no need to go beyond eight ports in a

bundle, because then what we should do is go to the next, higher speed
interface. If we're bundling eight gigabit ports together and we need more
bandwidth, lets go to a ten gig port. One thing I need to stress is that all
ports in a bundle must have identical operational status and configuration.
What this means is that any ports within a bundle must have the same
access ELAN assigned, the same native VLAN if they are trunking, they have
to be operating at the same speed, and have operate at either full-duplex or
half-duplex mode. All these things are the same. In fact, when they're
trunking, they have to have all the same allowed VLANs and these types of
parameters have to be the same.

Slide 8:
When we start looking at what EtherChannel actually does, what it is actually
doing is load sharing across the physical ports in the EtherChannel group. The
default method of load sharing uses the source MAC address in all the
frames. So as frames arrive at the EtherChannel, the switch looks at the
source MAC address and says this MAC address should go out this port, and
another unique MAC address goes out the second port, etc., etc. So the
frames are distributed based on source MAC addresses. One of the problems
we have though is that, say I have a server, and it is sending traffic and it
arrives at an EtherChannel, to go across the EtherChannel. All of the traffic
will be from one source, meaning that server. So all the traffic from the server
will go across one physical link that is part of that bundle . In this case we
may actually want to change the default load balancing for the switch, so that
it perhaps uses a destination load MAC address so that the traffic is
distributed better. We have a global command called port-channel loadbalance, and here you see the options we have: destination IP, destination
MAC, source destination IP, source destination MAC, source IP, or source MAC.
Once we understand where our key devices are located within our campus or
switched environment, and once we understand our traffic flows, we may
want to go and change the load balancing default.

Slide 9:
An important concept is that Ethernet frames, when they arrive at an
EtherChannel are not fragmented or split apart. An Ethernet frame that is
sent from one device is simply sent through the EtherChannel on one
selected port and traverses the link intact.

Slide 10:
Catalyst switches can leverage a protocol to dynamically establish and
maintain the EtherChannel bundle. When we use the channel-group mode,
we select which channelling group protocol EtherChannel is going to use. So,
we can use either Port aggregation Protocol (PAgP), Link Aggregation Protocol
(LACP), or, if we want to, we can simply force the interface to channel without
a channelling protocol. Forcing interfaces to channel may create problems if
any interfaces have dissimilar configurations.

Slide 11:
Port Aggregation Protocol allows the switches to learn the capabilities of each
interface assigned to an EtherChannel bundle and reliably activates
interfaces of similar configuration to form the port-channel. This is important.
So what happens, is PAgP actually ensures that the interfaces have the same
configuration before it puts it in the bundle, and it maintains that bundle by
sending traffic back and forth. PAgP transmits and receives messages on all
interfaces in the EtherChannel bundle to determine that they have an
identical configuration and it restricts the PAgP traffic to the native VLAN if
the ports are in trunking mode - there is no sense in sending PAgP traffic
tagged on different VLANs. LACP is similar in operation to PAgP and is
standards based protocol while PAgP is Cisco's proprietary one.

Slide 12:
It is important that other local link protocols such as dynamic trunking
protocol, virtual trunking protocol, Cisco discovery protocol and spanning-tree
protocol still transmit and receive frames over a port-channel. STP only sends
frames out the first interface in the port-channel and views the port-channel
as a single logical port.

Slide 13:
Spanning-tree reflects the increased bandwidth provided by EtherChannel by
reducing the spanning-tree cost across the channel. The example we have
here is that we have a 100 Mbps link for which has a normal spanning-tree
cost of 19 and if a port-channel is created that has two 100 Mbps links
assigned to it, this spanning-tree cost will be reduced to 9. A port-channel
with six or more 100 Mbps physical ports will have an STP cost of 5. The STP
costs for port-channels vary according to how many ports are actually

assigned to the bundle and do not vary depending on how many are active
within the bundle. Let me explain: If we have a bundle of six physical ports
with an STP cost of 5, we may not have every single physical port active
within the bundle. Maybe we only have four of the ports actually active and
two of them are not up yet for whatever reason. The STP cost will still be 5.
This stabilises STP a little bit, but keep in mind that when we create the
EtherChannel bundle using the port-channel command, that is when we
determine what the STP cost is.

Slide 14:
So how do we configure EtherChannel? We have to get into the interface
configuration mode. We do have the option of using the interface range
command if we have sequential ports to code. We use the channel group
command, then we use a number, and the number refers to the port channel
we are actually creating, the catalyst 29-60 has a possible six, so that's what
we have the numbers for. We then have mode, and then we have the option
to activate PAgP or LACP, or we have mode on, which forces the interface to
channel without a channel protocol. Do keep in mind that we have a
crossover cable between two switches, and we're looking at the ends of this
crossover cable. What are the settings on the ports on both switches? So if
both switches have the port set to auto, then PAgP will not actually take the
ports and put them into the channel group or into the port channel. But if one
end is desirable, or both channels are desirable, then PAgP will kick in and
place the ports into the port channel. The same thing applies for LACP. If both
ends of the link are passive, then LACP will not actually take the ports and put
them into the port channel. But if one end is active, or both ends are active,
then LACP will be the channelling protocol and it will turn around and take
those associated ports and put them into the port channel.

Slide 15:
If we wish to view the operation we use the term etherchannel in our
commands, or at least our show commands. Though it is interesting: we have
the channel group command, we have the port channel that we can look at,
and then we have the show interface etherchannel, show etherchannel
switches/commands. I have some slides following that will provide insight into
an EtherChannel setup between two switches. So we have two 29-60
switches connected together using, for example, crossover cables. Ports FA01
and FA02 are interconnected and I've used the channel group one mode
desirable on both ends. So let's have a look at the show EtherChannel
commands.

Slide 16:
show etherchannel: So here it is group 1 and the group state is layer 2. It is
possible to have layer 3 etherchannels so multilayer switches may be able to
create an EtherChannel and it may be considered a layer 3. For our purposes
we're just looking at the layer 2. This particular group 1 has two ports
assigned to it and has a maximum capacity of 8. The protocol that's
maintaining this group is PAgP.

Slide 17:
show etherchannel summary: Up the top here we have all the flags, so D, P, I,
H, etc. At the bottom we have the information. Here we have group 1, so that
is channel group 1, mode desirable. It is port channel 01. Its status is layer 2
S, and its status is in use. The protocol it maintains is PAgP and the ports are
FA01 and FA02 and both of those are in the channel and functional - key
status.

Slide 18:
show etherchannel load-balance: The default load balance is source MAC and
you can see here that it doesn't matter what type of traffic is flowing through
the EtherChannel, it's going to be distributed via the frames source MAC
address. So non-IP traffic, IpV traffic, IpV4 or IpV6 traffic is all distributed in
the same way.

Slide 19:
Etherchannel port-channel: Now we're taking a closer look at the actual portchannel. You can see that I've had this port-channel up for over an hour and I
have two ports assigned to it, it is channeling, it is a port-channel, it is
functioning, the protocol is PAgP, and I also have a little bit of information
about each of the ports - Fa01 and Fa02. Notice the time since last port
bundled was 37 minutes, this means I was been playing around a bit, but I
did create the port-channel over an hour ago. I highlight Fa01 because this is
where STP is going to run and this is sort of the primary port in the portchannel.

Slide 20:
Another command which has considerable output is the show interface
EtherChannel, and I'm not going to put this on the slide show, I encourage
you to enter that command and look through it a bit. All of these commands
that I have just presented are useful to troubleshoot EtherChannel operation.
But always when troubleshooting, begin by verifying all physical ports have
the same operational parameters and do this at both ends of the
EtherChannel. Next verify channel-group settings again at both ends of the
EtherChannel. Do not make assumptions verify and test. Just a little caveat I could have channel group 1 on switch 2, and channel group 2 on switch 2,
and I could bundle them together. That's not a problem, it's just that the
physical ports themselves have to have all the same settings.

Slide 21:
So this wraps up the introduction to EtherChannel. Please review the
accompanying notes for some added detail.

Slide 22:
Thanks for taking some time with me to discuss EtherChannel. I do hope you
enjoyed the slide show. Along with the slide show there should be a
documentation with a little more depth on EtherChannel. There should also
be a lab that you can complete on a catalyst on a 29-60 and a packet tracer
that you can operate in a little more depth, too. Also I'd like to say that
EtherChannel has been around for quite a while now, and it's a great method
to simplify our network designs and alleviate congestion issues, so I
encourage you to play around and take a look at this technology.

Slide 23:
NO SPEECH