Anybody acheived LACP (802.3ad) with cheapo switches? I've got an XServe with a quad port card and a Netgear GSM7324 layer 3 switch. Regardless of config and implementation I've been unable to get it work, the XServe complains of invalid partners across the connections and switch simply states that none of the links are up even though the link lights are on on the relevant ports and data appears to be passing through. Worth pointing out that the ports and cables work fine in isolation.

I wonder wether it's worth banging my head against a wall, maybe I should simply force my boss to buy Cisco or something that has a shred of credibility.

I have LACP running on an HP 5412zl switch (far from cheapo). Recently I had a power outage and the LACP didn't work right when the devices on the other end came back up. I ended up resolving it by disabling the ports on the switch side and reenabling them at the same time. (The switch allows you to configure multiple ports with one command.) Edit: To be clear, I'm talking about the backend ethernet ports, not the LACP virtual port.

You might try disabling the ports on the switch side and reenabling them, too. I figure it allows the switch to control the LACP handshaking better.

Of course, you may have already tried this.

From wikipedia:

Quote:
Note that when using Microsoft Windows, establishing a trunk with NICs usually only works among certain NIC types, and all must usually be of the same brand.[citation needed] The trunk itself is typically established at the device driver or NDIS level.

In Linux, Ethernet bonding (trunking) is implemented on a higher level, and can hence deal with NICs from different manufacturers or drivers, as long as the NIC is supported by the kernel.

Many cheapy switches now advertise trunking capability. Perhaps the best odds of it actually working are when used between two identical switches. Unless you really need multi-gigabit capacity from a single (non-Linux) server.

Cheers

The cheap switch actually mentions that it supports 802.3ad instead of just saying 'trunking' like some of the others that we have do.

Anyone had experience of an affordable switch that could do the trick? We were looking at getting two Netgear GSM7328's with 10Gbps fiber uplinks which is totalling £4600.