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Do all RS/6000 fast Ethernet adapters support etherchannel? 2

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edg

MIS
Aug 17, 2001
4
US
Hi, I've been searching for written documentation stating whether all RS/6000 10/100 ethernet adapters support IEEE 802.1Q VLAN and or Etherchannel. So far, I have only found vague references about AIX 4.3.3 adding the support for VLAN in the OS. But nothing specific about the adapters themselves. This implies to me that all of the adapters can support it. I am especially interested in the 4 port 4951 adapter. Thanks for your help.
 
Well I believe it is included in the AIX 4.3.3 not with the adapter......
Some info...but may not be too helpful...sorry
Maybe someone else can help as well.

Cisco Etherchannel Support
How does etherchannel work? Etherchannel would operate at layer 2 below
the protocol stack. The EtherChannel would have one MAC address and for IP
it would have one IP address. For outgoing traffic, the packets are sent out
over one of the adapters of the channel. Which adapter to use is decided by
the lower bits of destination MAC address of the outgoing packet for non-IP
traffic. For IP traffic, the lower bits of destination IP address is used to decide
the adapter. When an adapter of an Etherchannel is down, traffic would be
re-routed through one of the other adapters and this would be transparent to
the upper layers. For incoming traffic, packet could be received over any of the
adapters.

The Etherchannel can be configured with up to 4 Ethernet adapters. It
provides a scaleble server to switch bandwidth. It allows the combination of
multiple ethernet adapters together to form a larger pipe. The etherchannel
allows a server to switch connection throughput between 40 and 800 Mbps.
The etherChannel can be configured with up to 4 ether adapters (ent0, ent2,
ent3, ent5 ) By default all the adapters of the etherchannel would be assigned
the MAC address of the first adapter that the user selects. The user will also
have the option to set a MAC address for all the adapters. This will be done
using the "use_alt__addr" and "alt_addr" attributes. You would configure an
etherchannel after the ethernet device drivers are configured. And before any
users of those devices are configured. Software comes as a part of AIX 4.3.3
and is devices.common.IBM.ethernet.rte. It is set up in smit under smitty
etherchannel. You will then need to select two to four adapters from the list to
form your channel.
NOTE:
One has to remember that trunking solutions such as EtherChannel need
routers or switches which are capable of talking the same language. It doesn't
matter if you have AIX 4.3.3 running EtherChannel or Solaris 2.7 running
Trunking 1.x or HPUX 11.x with Port Aggregation software. If you don't have
the correct model of Cisco router with the appropriate software on it, you can't
use the trunking software on your OS.

There is also a new option to set interface specific options for network
devices. It is the use_isno option in the no command. I.e.
no -o use_isno=1 (1=enabled 0=disable) The individual setting with the
ifconfig command are: tcp_recvspace, tcp_sendspace, tcp_mssdflt,
tcp_nodelay, and rfc1323.

Etherchannel
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.

List All Etherchannels
Add An Etherchannel
Change / Show Characteristics of an Etherchannel
Remove An Etherchannel

select the ethernet adapters to add....

Add An Etherchannel

Type or select values in entry fields.
Press Enter AFTER making all desired changes.

Etherchannel Adapters ent0 ent1
Enable ALTERNATE ETHERCHANNEL address no
ALTERNATE ETHERCHANNEL address []

 
Hi edg,
that is what I recived from my local IBM Support 2 weeks ago:

"Network Interface Backup" is currently only supported for 10/100 PCI Ethernet Card (23100020) and Gigabit PCI Ethernet Card (1410041).

HTH
Axel
 
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