Installing and Administering LAN/9000 Software

Chapter 5 115

LAN Resources

Auto-Port Aggregation

HP APA (J4240AA) increases a user’s efﬁciency by grouping or

aggregating up to four ports into a single link having a single IP address.

The number of link aggregates allowed per computer is 50. The

aggregated connections are IEEE 802.3-compliant (IEEE 802.3u, 802.3z,

802.3ab, and 802.3ad) and can be either HSC, HP-PB, or PCI 10 or 100

Mbits/s Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet. This product offers full APA

functionality on HP-UX Release 11.0 servers and workstations. It

requires switches that support PAgP (HP, Cisco, 3COM, Foundry, and

Alteon) or LACP (all switches that support the IEEE 802.3ad standard).

With the Lan Monitor conﬁguration mode, APA offers a max of up to 32

ports per link aggregate.

LAN Monitor software for HP-UX 10.20 (J5080AA), a subset of the HP

APA, offers a link Failover feature on systems running Ethernet, Gigabit

Ethernet, FDDI, and Token Ring adapters on HSC, HP-PB, or PCI buses.

LAN Monitor can connect to hubs and switches of all types.

One of the key differences between HP APA and other trunking

technologies is the built-in management feature. HP APA includes a

protocol called Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP), Cisco’s Fast

EtherChannel (CiscoTM). The PAgP can signiﬁcantly reduce the amount

of manual intervention required by a system administrator to conﬁgure

and maintain port aggregations.

Refer to the manual Using HP Auto-Port Aggregations for further

information on installation and administration of the software.