07-15-2026 12:28 AM - edited 07-15-2026 01:22 AM
Hi,
I have this scenario.
Two ISE interfaces on the same subnet with NIC bonding.
G0 and G3 are on the same subnet.
For example: 192.168.150.x and 192.168.150.x
The G0 is for management and backup interface is G1.
G2 is for data traffic and backup is G3.
Are there any drawbacks/issues with this approach?
Now, I can't ping the G2 interface.
Has anyone deployed like this and if it has work or had any issues?
Any insights or suggestions. Thank you.
07-15-2026 04:42 AM
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07-15-2026 11:39 AM
Why do you want to do this? You need to use interface bonds not multiple interfaces in the same subnet.
07-15-2026 02:56 PM
Having two ISE interfaces on the same subnet (whether, two single interfaces, or two pairs of bonded interfaces) achieves nothing. Gig0 (or Gig0+1 = Bond0) is the only interface at L3 that responds to SSH - that means if you wanted some Management / Services separation, you should design your L3 such that Gig0 (or Bond0) only receives and initiates management (SSH, SNMP, HTTPs etc.) and Gig2 (or Gig2+3 = Bond1) handles RADIUS/TACACS/Portal (and that is the IP your NADs will use) - the separation is a Layer 3 separation.
Bonding is useful if you want your physical nodes to have some survivability in case of cable or upstream switch failures. No need for bonding in VMs and bonding is also not a load balancing mechanism. In other vendors it's called NIC Teaming - it's very simple stuff for L1 redundancy.
If you separate your control and services interfaces, it only makes sense on PSNs (no need for this on PAN or MNT nodes). And it also makes routing more complex on the nodes (you need an extra static route for the additional L3 interface. But most annoyingly, Cisco won't display that interface or IP address in the GUI - you only see it on the CLI - to the unsuspecting engineer, they won't even know it's there unless they look on the CLI. Aruba did this properly in Clearpass where they clearly distinguish between Management and Data interfaces - Cisco's half-hearted attempted was an afterthought at best.
07-15-2026 05:01 PM
This design is not recommended, and it likely explains why you cannot reliably ping G2.
The correct bonding pairs are fixed:
G1 and G3 must not have their own IP addresses. Each bond uses the IP and MAC address assigned to its primary interface. Cisco ISE bonding is active/standby for physical redundancy only; it is not load balancing, LACP, or link aggregation.
More importantly, Bond 0 and Bond 1 should not be placed in the same subnet. Cisco explicitly states that configuring two ISE interfaces in the same subnet is not recommended because ISE may not be able to determine which interface should transmit the traffic. This can produce ambiguous connected routes, ARP behavior, and asymmetric return traffic.
Use separate Layer 3 networks, for example:
Configure the connected switch ports as access ports in the appropriate VLANs. Do not configure a port-channel between the switch and ISE. Management access such as GUI, CLI and APIs is supported only through G0/Bond 0, while RADIUS authentication and accounting can be received on the other available interfaces.
For a multi-interface deployment, also verify the routing:
Add static routes or interface-specific default routes where required so that replies received through Bond 1 return through Bond 1. Cisco documents that a single default route on a multi-interface ISE node can cause asymmetric IP forwarding.
Therefore, the recommended correction is: keep Bond 0 and Bond 1 on different subnets, remove any IP from G1 and G3, and configure the required routing for Bond 1.
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