Ether channel bonding

[patnliz123]

Hi All,

I have a Catalyst 2940 switch which has 8 x 100MB ethernet ports and single Gigabit ethernet port. It runs IOS Version 12.1(22)EA8a.

I also want to acquire a streaming server that can stream HD video files to my HD TV downstairs. I understand from my colleagues that the network bandwidth required for streaming HD is 200MB (or maye it'll just use as much as it can get though I'd expect there to be a minimum requirement). I want to attach the streaming server to the switch and the switch, via the Gigabit port, to a powerline network in order to get the HD stream to the TV downstairs. The powerline network has 200MB bandwidth.

It looks to me like the ethernet connection from the streaming server to the switch is a bottleneck as its capacity is only 100MB and not enough to carry a HD Stream. Is it a possibility, in order to get a 200MB stream to the TV, to use 2 of the switch ports and acquire a streaming server with a pair of NICs? What I am asking is if there is a some way of using 2 ethernet connections from the streaming server to the switch to provide double the bandwidth of using 1 connection? If so, how sensible is this and are there any drawbacks with it?

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Pat

[Joseph W. Doherty]

I'm far from an expert on the subject, but I thought HD TV uses much less bandwidth for transmission because it normally uses a codec that provides compression. You might want to investigate this further (or someone else might comment).

On the subject of using multiple links between a server and a switch, some server NICs do support "channel" technology with switches (assuming the switch supports it too), but generally individual flows only use one physical link. If you were sending multiple video streams, it might be of benefit, but even then, link usage generally doesn't notice actual load (i.e. one link could be overloaded while the other is idle).

If the server has a gig NIC, you might be better off replacing your 2940 with a newer switch that provides multiple gig ports.