[c-nsp] IEEE 802.3ad interoperability

[Gregory Boehnlein]

> > Hi,
> >
> > Thinking of firing up LACP between a Cisco 3560G and a Netgear (yes
> > a Netgear -- ugh) gigabit switch (GSM7224).

Don't be hating on the Netgear! Our entire switching core (L2 and L3) is
based on Netgear GSM series equipment. Don't underestimate their enterprise
hardware. Lifetime warranty, excellent support, well documented, easy to
configure, low failure rate, does what it says it will do and is cost
effective enough that you can buy 3 for the price of a single Cisco. Some of
their earlier firmware releases were a little shaky, but we've been on
6.2.0.14 on the GSM series for about a year now, and never looked back. We
replaced a mish-mosh of various switches (Cisco, HP, Summit etc...) w/ a
standard rollout (first using the FSM series, but later migrating to the GSM
series). Nothing but love for Netgear at this point.

I have also deployed the Netgear stuff at about 20 customers so far, and
aside from one issue that was my own fault w/ regards to a firmware upgrade,
we haven't had any issues w/ the deployments.

> > Should LACP just work? Or is this the kind of thing where if any
> > kind of reliability is desired, I need to pop in another Cisco on
> > the other end ...

LACP between Netgear and Cisco should work as long as they both adhere to
the 802.3ad specs. There are other people I know that have done it, but
since we are all Netgear now I can't speak to it personally. I know that
Netgear's 802.3ad implementation plays nice w/ the Linux implementation
(Astaro in our case!).