It came to my attention today that when a Catalyst running CatOS reports

Port  Status     Channel   Channel     Neighbor                  Neighbor
                 mode      status      device                    port
----- ---------- --------- ----------- ------------------------- ----------
8/7  connected   on        channel
8/8  connected   on        channel

it means the two ports are bonded together.  This poses distinct problems when the server isn’t aware that the two connections are bonded.  A CentOS installation process that takes 5 minutes normally was still running 3 hours later, and it wasn’t even half-way.  What was even more interesting was that the repository server showed files being downloaded, but Anaconda swore blind that nothing was happening.

Live and learn.