02-17-2014 04:38 AM - edited 03-07-2019 06:14 PM
Morning folks,
Had an interesting question put to us which I've not come across before. Assuming I have a two channel Etherchannel consisting of multimode OM3 fibre, One pair being 100 meters and the other being 300 meters would this cause any issues with the performance of the Etherchannel. My thinking was that provided both pairs could negotiate the same speed and duplex settings the only issue would be that the longer distance may have potentially a slower transfer rate than the shorter length but I wasn't sure.
Can anybody point me in the direction of a suitable Cisco document or otherwise that may be able to advise on this?
TIA
Jamie
02-17-2014 05:15 AM
Hi Jamie,
Do not confuse the bandwidth and the latency. They are related but not in a strict way that would determine one by the other. The link with the 300m fiber will have a higher latency but the amount of data it is able to carry within a second is the same as the 100m link - just the data will start "pouring out" on the other end sooner or later, depending on the length.
On Cisco switches, EtherChannel always steers entire frame flows over the physical link in the bundle. This means that an entire conversation (as defined by hashing the selected fields from the frames, check the show etherchannel load-balance command to check it) is forwarded through a given link. Therefore, because different frame flows are, in general, independent, so should be the choice of the link. The fact that one of them has a higher latency should not be significant.
My two cents...
Best regards,
Peter
02-17-2014 05:29 AM
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As Peter noted, Etherchanneling keeps all flows on the same link, so as he also noted, the flow on the longer link would have some additional latency. However, also keep in mind that for a delta of 200m, the fiber, itself, would only add about 1 microsecond of additional latency. For most real-world applications, this additional latency is a non-issue.
02-17-2014 05:37 AM
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the reply, I realised the overwhelming mistake in my orginal question as soon as I read the first line of your reply Getting my fibre channel and ethernet muddled up. Teach me to try and do two things at once. Thanks for clearing that up for me though, Much appreciated.
Jamie
02-17-2014 01:52 PM
One pair being 100 meters and the other being 300 meters would this cause any issues with the performance of the Etherchannel.
Some of our etherchannel links are like this. No issues.
One physical link going one way and another physical link going another way. This addresses physical path redundancy. Quiet handy to deter an entire link being pulled by a fibre-trunk-hunting-buckhoe.
05-21-2016 09:16 AM
We have the same problem. The portchannel that has got 4 four channels(2 of them 2 meters, 2 of them 120 meters.) affects the throughput. This portchannel is uplink. When we transfer the data accross this portchannel on 4 four ports the throughput is 1GBps but if we shutdown the 120 meters port, the throughput is increasing and comes to 1.9GBps.
It'is ridicilous but real.
If some one interest, I will share more information.
05-21-2016 09:58 AM
Hi -
Need a little more information on your testing:
PSC
05-21-2016 10:33 AM
Hi Paul,
The answers are on the below.
I attached the topology.
Regards.
05-21-2016 11:02 AM
Hi there,
Do you have any figures regarding loss on the larger 120m links? Ideally things like attenuation and total loss in db?
It may be that although your not getting any errors reported the total throughput may be limited by the above somewhat. We certainly had that. The above also kind of assumes your tests are easily replicated and reliable and not giving you duff info regarding throughput.
Many thanks,
Jamie
05-21-2016 12:31 PM
Hi -
A few things come to mind here.
PSC
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