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Cisco IE 2000 Switch Software Configuration Guide
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Configuring EtherChannels

Finding Feature Information

Your software release may not support all the features documented in this chapter. For the latest feature
information and caveats, see the release notes for your platform and software release.
Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support an d Cisco software image
support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on
Cisco.com is not required.

Restrictions for Configuring EtherChannels

To use this feature, the switch must be running the LAN Base image.
Port channel is supported in only the LAN Base image.

Information About Configuring EtherChannels

This chapter describes how to configure EtherChannels on the switch. EtherChannel provides
fault-tolerant high-speed links between switches, routers, and servers. You can use it to increase the
bandwidth between the wiring closets and the data center, and you can depl oy it anywhere in the network
where bottlenecks are likely to occur. EtherChannel provides automatic recovery for the loss of a link
by redistributing the load across the remaining links. If a link fails, EtherChannel redirects traffic from
the failed link to the remaining links in the channel without intervention. This chapter also describes how
to configure link-state tracking.