Link Aggregation Overview

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is part of the IEEE specification (802.3az) that allows you to bundle several physical ports together to form a single logical channel (LAG). LAGs multiply the bandwidth, increase port flexibility, and provide link redundancy between two devices.

Two types of LAGs are supported:

Load Balancing

Traffic forwarded to a LAG is load-balanced across the active member ports, thus achieving an effective bandwidth close to the aggregate bandwidth of all the active member ports of the LAG.

Traffic load balancing over the active member ports of a LAG is managed by a hash-based distribution function that distributes Unicast and Multicast traffic based on packet header information.

The switch supports two modes of load balancing:

LAG Management

In general, a LAG is treated by the system as a single logical port. In particular, the LAG has port attributes similar to a regular port, such as state and speed.

The switch supports four LAGs.

Every LAG has the following characteristics: