Cisco EtherChannel Topologies(4)

Cisco EtherChannel Technology Interconnecting Servers, Switches, and Routers Across the Campus

This figure shows a complete network design based on Cisco EtherChannel technology. As in the previous examples, links from the wiring closets are brought into the data center using 400 Mbps channels, providing bandwidth and resiliency. In the data center, routers are interconnected with EtherChannel connections, providing improved performance by having more bandwidth available to route between subnets. Here the router is configured with two dual-link EtherChannel connections to provide 400 Mbps of bandwidth on each subnet. The EtherChannel technology provides load balancing across two links within the channel based on IP addresses, and the links within the channel can use ISL encapsulation to support multiple subnets per link. The last component in this network design is a server attached via a four-link EtherChannel connection, which provides 800 Mbps of bandwidth to the network. Typical platforms that would require such bandwidth would be high-end Pentium Pro servers, enterprise servers, and high-end graphics imaging and rendering servers. As shown in Figure 4, the server is connected via a multiple-link EtherChannel connection—an excellent match for the bandwidth needs of locally attached users and the users serviced via the router.