VPC - [Part 1] - SINGLE CHASSIS ETHER-CHANNEL Vs MULTI CHASSIS ETHER-CHANNEL

Before VPC (Virtual Port Channel), we should know about Single-Chassis Ether-Channel and Multi-Chassis Ether-Channel. Basically Port-Channel is a mechanism, which is used to combine or bundle the physical links into a single logical links.

Single-Chassis Ether-Channel

• Check the above topology, Ether-Channel can be configure between only two devices , so there will be 1 Downstream and 1 Upstream device. Bandwidth increased but still have single point of failure.

Multi-Chassis Ether-Channel

• Check the above topology, Multi-Chassis Ether-Channel will be configured between 3 devices.
• Bandwidth increase and resiliency.
• You can use multiple mechanism of Multi-Chassis Ether-Channel devices wise

1. Cross Stack Port Channel - The Ether-Channel on multiple switches in the Cisco Catalyst 3750 and 3850 stack is known as cross-stack Ether-Channel. If a link within an Ether-Channel will be fails, traffic will be switched to remaining links within the Ether-Channel. Cisco 3750 and 3850 support Cross Stack Port Channel.

2. VSS (Virtual Switching System) - VSS is Cisco proprietary, It is used to create a single logical switch out of two physical switches. 6500 series and 4500 series switches support VSS. Stack Wise Switch and VSS uses a single control plane.

3. VPC (Virtual Port Channel) - Actually VPC allows the links which are physically connected to two different Nexus devices to appear as a single Port-Channel to a third device which can be a switch, server, or any other networking device. Nexus support VPC. VPC uses two separate control plane.

• Without Multi-Chassis Ether-Channel, the Downstream device can have multiple links which will be bundled together and connected to a single Upstream device.  

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Anubhav Upadhyay

Hello and welcome to networktopic Blog. My name is Anubhav. I am a Senior Network Egineer. I have created this blog specially to serve interview questions and answer on Network Routing and Switching, I will try my best to serve correct and updated networking knowledge for you as per my corporate experience.

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