Etherchannel Layer 2

[david.mitchell]

According to the Cisco documentation below

• When configuring Layer 3 EtherChannels, you must manually create the port channel logical

interface first (see the “Configuring Port Channel Logical Interfaces for Layer 3 EtherChannels” section on page 12-7), and then put the Layer 3 LAN ports into the channel group as described in this section.

• When configuring Layer 2 EtherChannels, configure the LAN ports with the channel-group

command as described in this section, which automatically creates the port channel logical interface.

You cannot put Layer 2 LAN ports into a manually created port channel interface.

• For Cisco IOS to create port channel interfaces for Layer 2 EtherChannels, the Layer 2 LAN ports must be connected and functioning

Source: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6500/ios/12.2SXF/native/configuration/guide/channel.pdf.

It is this statement “You cannot put Layer 2 LAN ports into a manually created port channel interface” from above that I disagree with

I have created interface Port-channel 35

And then I have bundled Gi1/0/1 andGi1/0/2 within this using the channel-group command as normal

Can any explain if this was something you couldn’t do on older switches or is this an error. I seem to recall reading this and witnessing this issue in the past but can’t be sure

Thanks in advance,

David

[Wilson Bonilla]

Hello David.

I agree that you can add L2 ports in manually defined etherchannels. i remember

doing that multiple times myself. How else would we provision new links in an

already created etherchannels??? So i would safely assume that the statement is not accurate.

Wilson.

[Shirshendu Nandi]

“

You can put Layer 2 LAN ports into a manually created port channel interface

“

You cannot put Layer 3 interfaces  ports into any  created port channel interface