Can you use multiple bridges together for increased bandwidth

[Scott Fella]

I have a cusomer that purchased 16 1300 bridges. They want 8 bridges on each side and etherchannel them together.... is this even possible without interference. Also if this would be possible, how do you prevent stp loops. If you enable stp, that would block all links except for one. Correct??? Can it be possible to use a L3 switch and configure eigrp point to point? Thanks! Could not find any info.

[PETER EIJSBERG]

I doubt if this is possible. Etherchannel would require an ethernet swich on both ends to do the channeling across 8 paths, and then you would have to set up the 1300s as very dump forwarding machines, turning off all MAC learning, STP, etc.

It may be easier to build a L3 solution where you route from one site to the remote site using load balancing over 8 paths... You would have to configure the max-path for load-balancing, though.

In any event, how will you prevent the 16 bridges from interfering with eachother? There are not enough independent channels in the 2.4 GHz band, so you would require very focused antennas or so.

Hope it helps. Good luck!

[Scott Fella]

I understand.... I thought it would not be possible, but Cisco sold them this solution and I have to do the install. We do have switches on each end, but I was asking them if they were L3 or not. I was going to do the L3 point to point using EIGRP, but the max-path is 6, so that would leave 2 bridges unusable for load balancing. As for antennas, the part list does not even show any external antennas, so I figure they were going to use the internal which would be impossible to contain interference unless they spread out the locations, which might not even help. Thanks for the info!

[Scott Fella]

TAC told me that etherchannel all eight together would work fine and I would just have to disable stp on the bridges. Also someone told me if I change the polarity to a neighbor bridge on the same channel would help with channel seperation and lessen interference.

The setup they want to do is a total of 10 bridges on each side. 8 bridges on on etherchannel and 2 bridges on another. STP will block the etherchannel with 2 bridges. They will have 4 roof mount poles.. pole 1 with 3 bridges on 1,6,11 (verticle polarization).. pole 2 with 3 bridges on 1,6,11 (horizontal polarization)..pole 3 with 2 bridges on 1,6(verticle polarization).. pole 4 with 2 bridges on 6,11 (horizontal polarization)

Any input or comment would help... Thanks!