Switch Port Teaming?

[Scheer]

I'm looking to team two switches together for 2 or 4 Gbps speed, and while I've read it is possible I am not finding any good pages describing the process, what switches support it, etc... Has anyone done this yet and have some good references? I'm running Cat6a for future use, but until 10GigE switches drastically drop in price I'm not going that route.

 

Thanks.

[niksuto]

It's called link aggregation, I'm sure you'll be finding a whole lot more when using that term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

[rufee]

Smart switches and Managed switches support LACP aka Teaming.

It does not offer any benefit if you are transferring a large file for example, you wont go over 1gig in transfer speeds just so you know, however you will have 2-4 of those for parallel tasks.

[Scheer]

Searching link aggregation was the ticket, thank you.

I'll be using it to connect my garage to my house and have multiple computers in each and 1gbps doesn't cut it when I'm pulling from the file server in the house on multiple computers in the shop. The added redundancy will be nice as well.

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[Crion]

Hopefully, you plan on spending a couple hundred dollars on a switch because you'll need something along the lines of a Cisco 2960-S or a Juniper EX-2200.  The cheapest price I know of is a EX-2200 for over $500 USD.

[Scheer]

Hopefully, you plan on spending a couple hundred dollars on a switch because you'll need something along the lines of a Cisco 2960-S or a Juniper EX-2200.  The cheapest price I know of is a EX-2200 for over $500 USD.

 

From what I understand as long as it supports IEEE 802.3ad it will work just fine, and there are plenty of switches around $100-$150 that support it.

[Crion]

From what I understand as long as it supports IEEE 802.3ad it will work just fine, and there are plenty of switches around $100-$150 that support it.

 

Technically 802.3ad Link Aggregation has been replaced by 802.1ax as of 2008.  The reason was there were several scenarios, such as 802.1x authentication, that were not accounted for back during the initial standardization process. .1ax accounts for those differences while 802.3ad does not.  Problem is many sites on the internet use 802.3ad and LACP, which is a part of .1ax, interchangeably (even manufacturer websites) and they do so incorrectly.  If the switch says it supports link aggregation and it was manufactured after 2008, I would assume that it is using .1ax.  If the switch says it supports link aggregation, then it should work. 

 

Just keep in mind though that even with a bonded interface between two locations, you'll still be bottlenecked by each individual machine's interface.