What is link aggregation?
Cisco’s proprietary Inter-Switch Link trunking (ISL) and Adaptec’s Duralink port aggregation software are just a few of the popular names for aggregation techniques that have been supported by many switch and NIC manufacturers. The basic problem with these techniques, and the reason we now have 802.3ad, is that they were only designed to work with a single brand of network equipment. This meant major headaches for network administrators who needed the faster “aggregated” links but wanted to use a different brand of networking hardware. As switch and NIC vendors begin introducing support for 802.3ad in their products, you can expect increased compatibility across different NICs and switches, as well as a few other major benefits. First, the standard applies to 10M, 100M and 1,000M bit/sec Ethernet. Aggregated links can use a combination of these speeds on a single logical link. This increases the options available when you have one remaining gigabit port and three or four 100M bit/sec p
