[c-nsp] Etherchannel and variable latency on member links

[Jeff Kell]

Peter Rathlev wrote:
> As far as I can understand the loadsharing is strictly deterministic, so
> out-of-order frames shouldn't be a problem. I assume the switch itself
> doesn't care about the difference; we plan to use LACP as we do on all
> other etherchannels.

AFAIK, etherchannel will select one physical path per flow (based on 
src/dst ip/mac), so there is no out-of-order to it, nor any load-sharing 
in the sense that it pays any attention to the link load at all.  At 
least from the Cisco end... I can't speak for all vendors / host adapters.

If it *can* load-share, cisco-to-cisco, I'd love to be corrected; but 
you need something like EIGRP for that (to really look at "load") or 
equal-cost paths and per-packet load sharing.

Jeff