Ether channel between fiber optic ports any difference?

[ohalnet53]

I will appreciate any help about the below questions.

there are two catalyst 4506 multilayer switches, Two SFP modules are installed on each switches for uplink purpose. (1000 Base SX fiber optic Gigabit ethernet SFP modules)

I want to connect two switches each other. Question is;

1.Can I bundle these two gigabit ports (ether channel) and get Two gigabit connection between switches ?

2.If I can do it, what happens if one of the lines fails?

I know I can configure ether channel between copper fast ethernet ports but I am not sure If I can benefit same feature for 1000 base SX fiber optic ports.

Thank you very much for helping :)

[leonvd79]

Gigabit EtherChannel allows you to bundle up to eight gigabit ethernet interfaces, that includes copper or optical connections. All ports need to have the same speed/duplex configuration and if they're trunked need to have an identical trunk configuration.

GEC uses an X-OR algorithm to load balance traffic across the individual links. If one of them fails the link is removed from the channel and traffic is forwarded over the remaining link.

HTH

Leon

* Please rate posts if you find them helpful.

[ankurbhasin]

Hi Friend,

You can run a command "sh port capabilities " and that will how that whether that ports are capable of etherchannel or not.

Also AFAIK SFP ports are just the physical medium so it does not make a differece, they should be capable of etherchannel.

Also if one port of the channel goes down traffic will start trasversing through the other port so it will take care as redundancy. It will behave like other etherchannel which you cofnigure with copper ports.

HTH, if yes please rate the post.

Ankur

[ohalnet53]

Leon and Ankur thank you very much for helpful information. I have rated both of you but somehow rates arent shown. I dont know how to fix it, sorry about that.