Both the actor and the partner monitor LACPDU in order to ensure that ‘communication is correctly established and that they have the correct view of the other's capability. ‘The aggregated link is considered to be nonoperational when there is a disagreement between an actor and its partner. When an aggregation is considered nonoperational, that port will not be used to transfer data packets. A port will only be used to transfer data packets if both the actor and the partner have exchanged LACPDU and they agree with each other's view. 7.1.3 AIX V7.1 enhancement to IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Prior to AIX V7.1, the AIX implementation of the IEEE 802.3ad protocol did not wait for the LACP exchange to complete before using the port for data transmission, This could result in packet loss if the LACP partner, which may typically be an Ethernet switch, relies on LACP exchange to complete before it uses the port for data transmission. This could result in significant packet loss if the delay between, the link status up and the LACP exchange complete is large. AIX\V7.1 includes an enhancement to the LACP implementation to allow ports to exchange LACPDU and agree upon each other's state before they are ready for data transmission This enhancement is particularly useful when using stacked Ethernet switches. ‘Without this enhancement to the AIX implementation of IEEE 802.3ad, stacked Ethernet switches may experience delays between the time that an Ethernet port is activated and an LACPDU transmit occurs when integrating or reintegrating an Ethernet switch into the stacked Ethernet switch configuration. Important: In previous versions of AIX, the implementation of the IEEE 802.3ad protocol did not require Ethernet switch ports to be configured to use the 802.3ad protocol, AIX V7.1 and AIX V6.1 TLO6 require the corresponding Ethernet switch ports to be configured in IEEE 802.3ad mode when the AIX Ethernet interface is ‘operating in the 802.3ad mode, When planning to upgrade or migrate to AIX V7.1 or AIX V6.1 TLO6, ensure that any Ethernet switch ports in use by an AIX 802,ad Link Aggregation are configured to support the 802.3ad protocol. Chapter 7. Networking 273