>>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