>>Please hazard a guess on this one: If the adapter doesn't and the channel doesn't form, does that mean the ip address won't be pingable at all? Thanks again for your help - it's much appreciated. Jeff
In my experience, if the channel does not form, the switch has no way of knowing these 2 (or more) ports go to the same node. Therefore, it will treat them as two (or more) separate nodes since it will see two different MAC addresses: one on each port. The IP address assigned to each NIC should then be ping-able (asuming all routing/VLANs and such working properly) as it would as if you were not trying to channel and just had a node with 2 NICs. The only way I can think of this NOT happening, is if: (a) mis-config of NIC(s) on node e.g. no IP assigned, administratively downed (b) the switch is set to FORCE a channel (done with "CHANNEL-GROUP x MODE ON" or some variation of depending on switch model...). In this case, the switch will be expecting a channel to form, if one does not, connectivity may not be established. This can be used to form a channel if the NIC(s) do NOT suppport PAgP, or have weak support of, but are still capable of EtherChannel since no PAgP frames are sent in the "ON" mode. We had case (b) happen on some Intel NICs we had once. They supported EtherChannel, but for some reason PAgP did not work. When we set the channel to "ON" (forced) and it worked. This might be the case with ours. Hope that helps some! Chris
