Etherchannel question

Do the portchannel numbers on either side of a link have to match? I thought that they did, but my boss says that they do not.

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Comments

Netstudent

Thats a good question. I googled it and skimmed through several cisco articles and couldn;t find anything that explicitly stated they had to match. I would like to know as well. I wish I had gear at work like a lot of people on here.

larkspur

the port channels numbers on my 6509 do not match up with my edge switches.

Though for deign and support purposes it probably is not a bad a idea.

hth!

mikearama

I'm the same. As an example:

From the server stack:

Ports in the Port-channel:

Index Load Port EC state No of bits

0 00 Gi2/0/1 On/FEC 0
0 00 Gi1/0/1 On/FEC 0

Time since last port bundled: 49d:17h:02m:47s Gi1/0/1

And other end, on the core:

Ports in the Port-channel:

Index Load Port EC state No of bits

1 00 Gi5/5 On/FEC 0
0 00 Gi6/5 On/FEC 0

Time since last port bundled: 49d:17h:02m:47s Gi5/5

Guess your boss gotcha on this one.

Mike

borumas

They don't have to match from what I remember, however in the ICND book it says "Both switches must agree on the number for the EtherChannel--1 in this case"- that's on page 61 end of first paragraph in the ICND book for exam 640-811. It could be a typo in the book though, found allot of typos in the questions on the Intro book so this might be the case here.

dtlokee

The port channel numbers do not need to match, as long as the Etherchannel has a compatible negotiation protocol (LACP or PAgP) on both sides or you've set both sides to on you're ok. Also ensure you have the same number of links and all the links have the same L2 characteristics (such as trunking or vlan configuration)