@bdl 

Hi there, are you using the Controller mode to manage these two switches, or use the Standalone mode? In the Standalone mode, we can change the system priority and the modes of port(active or passive) to determine which switch works downstream and which in the upstream.

https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/991/

Not pretty sure if you are talking about "downstream and upstream" refer to this thing, on this link we can see that:

1. A lower system priority value indicates a higher system priority. When exchanging information between systems, the system with higher priority determines which link aggregation a port belongs to, and the system with lower priority adds the proper ports to the link aggregation according to the selection of its partner. If the System Priority value is the same, the device with a smaller MAC address owns a higher priority.

2. There are two modes of ports: Active and Passive. In Active mode, the port can send LACP packets actively while in Passive mode, the port can only send LACP packets after it has received an LACP packet. It is suggested that set one side as Active mode and the other side as Passive mode.

@John1234 

Hi John, thanks for your reply - I'm using all switches in controller mode, is there anyway to set the active/passive modes using the controller? They were purchased for the controller functionality so I am not in a position to reconfigure them as standalone mode.

@bdl Did you get this figured out? I have the exact same setup with the exact same issue.

@bbbronco unfortunately not, I was hoping once the switch firmwares come out of beta that this issue may be resolved... although who know when that will be, as tp-link does not seem to release firmwares on a regular basis...