What Is Ether Channel Computer Science

What is Ether Channel. You might be thinking that ok, there is an Ethernet link that would be connected between a router or a switch and providing a channel for the communication or lets say data transmission. Well if yes, then, you are right. Amazed? But there is a something interesting that makes it a wide concept and more than just a communication channel. How? Without further ado let's start then.

Ether channel combines multiple individual links, providing a logical link. Simple right?

This logical link is able to provide up to 16Gbps of bandwidth (Known as Gigabit Ether Channel) or 1600Mbps of bandwidth (Known as Fast ether Channel) between two Cisco Catalyst Switches. But please note that the all of the interfaces taking part in creating an Ether Channel should be configured as of same speed and duplex along with the both ends configured as Layer 2 or Layer 3 interface.

Ok, now what happens if one of the links in the ether channel fails? Any guesses? Well, if any of the links fail on the ether channel, the traffic flows on the remaining links.

Now let's talk about the protocols that provide the link aggregation in this all setup. There are two of the protocols provided that is responsible for the formation of EtherChannel.

Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) - This is a Cisco proprietary protocol

Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP) - This is the IEEE standard

PagP is very interesting and honestly you are going to love it too. What it is doing is, PAgP packets are sent over the fast Ethernet links to negotiate the forming of a link (Fast Ether Channel Link). When our PAgP identifies matched Ethernet link, it creates a EtherChannel by grouping the links. EtherChannel is then added to the spanning tree as a single bridge port as we don't want to flood the network and want to use the EtherChannel efficiently.

PAgP has three modes of operation;

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