Channelising - binding two ports to get 200mb speed

[JMH070]

I have been told that it is possible using a duel-port NIC to "bind" two ports to give a server a 200meg connection. The bearer of this news called it "channelising".

Has anyone heard of this and know how it works?

 

[tuks]

We employ this using a L3 Switch/Router. Its called ether channel.

 

[nohair]

Hi,
In Cisco-speak this is called EtherChannel. I use it quite a lot. 2 examples of where I use it is to bind 4 ethernet ports together for our Enterprise unix servers, and to aggregate bandwidth between switches. Out Cat6000's have a connection of 3GB between each other by channeling 3 GB ports. Very handy.

-Stephen

 

[jgercken]

Both devices must support the protocol. The Intel Pro Lan cards are the only NICs I'm aware that can for Windows & Linux.

One thing to note is you can only bind in even pairs. If you have 8 (max on cisco devices) and unplug one the aggregate will drop to 6. The handy thing is you can form channels with ports on different blades. If one fails the protocol will heal automatically.
-Jeff
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