3com 9000 SX User Manual

Load sharing is most useful in cases where the traffic transmitted from 
the Switch to the load-sharing group is sourced from an equal or 
greater number of ports on the Switch. For example, traffic transmitted 
to a 2-port load-sharing group should originate from a minimum of 
two other ports on the same Switch.

This feature is supported between Switch 9000 Switches only, but may 
be compatible with third-party “trunking” or sharing algorithms. 

To set up the Switch 9000 to load share among ports, you must create 
a load-sharing group of ports. Load-sharing groups are defined 
according to the following rules:

■

Ports on the Switch are divided into groups of two or four.

■

Ports in a load-sharing group must be contiguous.

■

Valid port combinations are distinguished by the outlined boxes in 
Table 3-8.

■

The first port in the load-sharing group is configured to be the 
“master” logical port. This is the reference port used in 
configuration commands. It can be thought of as the virtual port 
representing the entire port group.

Table 3-8 shows the allowable load-sharing port group combinations 
for the Switch 9000. 

When you define a load-sharing group, you assign a group of ports to 
a single, logical port number. To enable or disable a load-sharing group, 
use the following commands:

enable sharing <master_port> grouping <portlist>

disable sharing <master_port>

Table 3-8   Port Combinations for the Switch 9000

4-port groups

x

x

x

x

2-port groups

x

x

x

x

x

x

SW9000.BK  Page 15  Wednesday, April 1, 1998  11:00 AM