Etherchannel on catalyst 2950

[grave-systems]

Hi All

I have a Dell Poweredge 2600 server with 2 Intel 1000Mb NICs on it that I want to connect to my Catalyst 2950 switch using an etherchannel.

I have forced both the cards to run at 100Mb Full Duplex. And also forced both the ports on the switch to be the same speed.

I then use the Intel driver suite to create an FEC Team with both NICs.

Finally I use the web based admin for the switch to group the 2 ports together in an etherchannel.

Unfortunately this won't work. Both the LEDs on the switch ports stay as orange and the etherchannel is reported as suspended in the web based admin package.

Can anyone explain what is going wrong here please?

I have set this up many times before with Dell servers and catalysts so can't understand why. I can only think it is because these NICs are 1000Mb ones, but that shouldn't matter as I have forced them to run at 100Mb.

Thanks in advance

Graham

[dnsmicro]

Double check the trunking protocol on your nics. The 2950 only does dot1q. The older Catalyst were able to do isl and dot1q.

[grave-systems]

Hi

I have tried to look for the trunking protocols on the Windows server 2003 drivers but cannot find them. Can you point me in the right direction please. I am running using the Intel ProSet drivers.

Thanks

[bruce.porter]

Are the ethernet negotiations set the same? You can't mix auto negotiations and fixed speeds or you will not channel.

[grave-systems]

Hi

Yes I have forced both the NICs to run at 100Mb Full-Duplex.

I have also forced the switch ports to do the same.

Thanks for taking time to post

Graham

[foxpreacher]

check if the two ports are in the same vlan.

[#7]

Did you find a solution to this problem? I have a Gateway 975 server with 2 Intel 1000mb NICS, and I'm connecting them to a Cat 2950 switch. I think I've configured Etherchannel correctly (channel-group 2, channel-protocol pagp). I've teamed the NICS using Intel Proset, and set them to FEC mode. When I try to test the config using Proset, it says "The teaming mode requires port aggregation on the switch, but the switch is not configured with port aggregation." I checked the switch using show etherchannel, and it shows both ports (11 and 12) but says their state is "Up Sngl-port-Bndl Mstr Not-in-Bndl". The port channel status shows :

Port-channel: Po2

------------

Age of the Port-channel = 02d:15h:21m:31s

Logical slot/port = 1/0 Number of ports = 0

GC = 0x00000000 HotStandBy port = null

Port state = Port-channel Ag-Not-Inuse

Protocol = PAgP

Anyone got any ideas why this won't work?

Thanks

Grahame