Overview of Link Aggregation

Ethernet link aggregation, also called Eth-Trunk, bundles multiple physical links into a logical link to increase link bandwidth, without having to upgrade hardware. Link aggregation provides link backup mechanisms, greatly improving link reliability.

Link aggregation has the following advantages:

• Increased bandwidth

  The maximum bandwidth of the link aggregation interface is the sum of the bandwidth of member interfaces.

• Higher reliability

  When an active link fails, traffic on this active link is switched to another active link, improving reliability of the link aggregation interface.

• Load balancing

  In a link aggregation group (LAG), traffic is load balanced among active links of member interfaces.

Figure 1 Eth-Trunk networking