On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, John Tatar wrote:
TIP_587 Etherchannel: Definition, Support and Usage (http://now.netapp.com/knowledge/contents/TIP/TIP_587.shtml)
States "the terms "Etherchannel" and "trunking" are used interchangeably", but those terms are not interchangeble in the Cisco world. Etherchannel links together multiple 10/100 Ethernet ports into one virtual port. Trunking provides the ability for multiple Vlans (read subnets) to communicate over a single port.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the vif command allows you to do the former, not the latter.
Etherchannel is a proprietary Cisco (I believe) name. Trunking is the generic name initially used to describe this type of service. Both terms are currently deprecated with respect to aggregating several point to point IEEE 802.3 connections. The proper term is "link aggregation" and the standard is being defined as IEEE 802.3ad. The other part to generalized trunking is "LAN aggregation" IEEE 802.1 which concerns itself with providing redundant transmission paths between two or more segments of the same logical network (i.e. VLAN).
Fast-Etherchannel doesn't get you any performance boost if you wind up having to route packets.
Unless your router is capable of transmitting that much data. Remeber there are ethernet to ethernet/fddi/etc. routers.
The only problem we have experienced with multi-homing is that the automounter on our Unix boxes complains about the multiple mount points.
Interesting, tell me more, please.
Tom