XGS1210-12 Link Aggregation

fonaminos · December 2020

I bought a XGS1210-12 and wanted to connect my NAS with two eth interfaces via LAG mode 4 to the Switch. Looks like the XGS1210-12 is not supporting IEEE 802.3ad / LACP. Am i right? Can sombody tell me what LAG modes are supported under Linux?

tonygibbs16 · December 2020

Hello @fonaminos

From looking at the user guide available at ftp://ftp.zyxel.com/XGS1210-12/user_guide/ it seems like the XGS1210-12 does not support Etherchannel link aggregation with the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) as defined in IEEE 802.3ad.

According to section 10.2 of the user guide, the XGS1210-12 switch only supports static link aggregation, i.e. where the Ethernet links are always bound together.

Maybe this will do what you want as long as you set both ends to always do link aggregation with the same number of Ethernet links and to not attempt any kind of LACP/PAgP negotiation for Etherchannel.
- I had many fun hours with this when studying for CCNA Routing & Switching certification.

I hope that this is helpful.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Tony

Dexxer · January 2021

I too have Synology NAS i set the XGS1210 as Balance XOR LAG on the NAS.

On the NAS it shows 2Gbps connection but in the XGS interface, it stills shows only 1Gbps LAG...
For some reason, the LAG is not working properly on this switch.

Was someone able to make it work and double his LAN speed on a NAS?

Boab21 · January 2021

I am having the same issue, trying to lag my qnap. Shows only as 2.5gbe connection. When I try transfer speed via spf port max speed 2.5gbe. No matter what settings I change or tweak I can’t get any faster than 2.5gbe.

Boab21 · February 2021

I have just had the following confirmed

It seems to be a hardware limitation, you can setup static link aggregation which will just support a active/passive state of the links with 2.5 Gbps per interface.
No increase of throughput is possible. For this you need load balancing which is not supported by this switch.

so what on earth is the point of there Lag??

Zyxel_Melen · February 2021

Hi @Dexxer @Boab21,

Let me explain that link aggregation increase the available bandwidth between network devices.
So if you aggregate four 1 Gbps ports, you'll get 4 Gbps available bandwidth.
Then switch will hash the incoming traffic based on MAC address and ip address to do load sharing.

However, one traffic flow goes one physical port and the maximum speed on one physical port is 1Gbps, so the maximum speed you see on the screen when sending the files will still be 1 Gbps.

napaHouk · April 2021

Greetings. I also ran into this problem. Lack of IEEE 802.3ad aggregation in the switch. And please tell me, someone from Zyxel employees, is there such a possibility that the new firmware of the switch will support this mode of operation of port aggregation?

PeterUK · April 2021

Nebula_Melen said:

Let me explain that link aggregation increase the available bandwidth between network devices.
So if you aggregate four 1 Gbps ports, you'll get 4 Gbps available bandwidth.
Then switch will hash the incoming traffic based on MAC address and ip address to do load sharing.
However, one traffic flow goes one physical port and the maximum speed on one physical port is 1Gbps, so the maximum speed you see on the screen when sending the files will still be 1 Gbps.

So why has no one done a hash where it does least loaded so that a single connection traffic flow splits across the LAG?

Zyxel_Melen · April 2021

Hi @napaHouk,

Welcome to Zyxel community!
I assume you are asking XGS1210, it won't support IEEE 802.3ad in future.
If you need this function and also need 10G speed, we suggest us to choose XGS1930 or XS1930.