Nortel & Cisco Connectivity

[shaneh0]

I'm currently running a 2924xl. I'm in the market for 2 new switches to accompany that. My initial reaction was cisco all the way.

Then a friend of mine who runs a pretty large distribution company told me he can get me an incredible deal on Notel BayStack 310s. List price is $1000+ and I can get them for $250.

All of a sudden the nortel switches are looking attractive.

My initial plan was to link the three Cisco switches with full duplex EtherChannel. The Nortel switch offers similar technology they dub "Multi-Link Trunking."

My question is will I be able to run an 'EtherChannel' connection between these switches? I need at least 400Mbs. If i can't I'll have to pass on these nortel switches, even if it is the sweetest deal I've seen all year.

 

[baddos]

Yes if the Baystack supports 802.3ad, but you won't get anywhere neer 400MB even on a cisco-cisco connection. Etherchannel just doesn't work that way. Cisco uses the Port Aggregation Protocol based on source and destination addresses to aggregate bandwidth between the different links. If you need more bandwith, go GIG.

-Bad Dos