SMLT

[carl_townshend]

I believe nortel have this option, where you can combine 2 ports to make an etherchannel, but you can have them going to other switches rather than both going to the same switch, i belive you dont need spanning tree with this too, do cisco do such a think, and how come it doesnt need spanning tree ?

[Francois Tallet]

The Nortel solution creates a distributed channel between two distribution switches and an access switch. The access switch just sees a channel and there is some additional magic so that the distribution switches also consider those two independent links as a single one. I think this solution has several limitations and involves software management of the cam tables between the two distribution switches. You can achieve something similar with the stackable switches and the cat6k will soon support a "virtual switch" that also allows you to support a distributed channel. Don't know how soon though...

Regards,

Francois