Allied Telesis AT-8324 - Manual (Page 35)

AT-8316F and AT-8324 Installation Guide
35
Port Trunking
As explained in Chapter 1, port trunking, also referred to as “link
aggregation,” is an economical way for you to increase the
bandwidth between an AT-8316F or AT-8324 switch and another
network device, such as a server, router, workstation, or another
switch. A port trunk is two or more data ports that have been
grouped together to increase the bandwidth between a switch and a
network node. This increase in bandwidth can prove useful in
situations where a single connection between the switch and
another node is insufficient to handle the traffic load.
When ports are trunked together, they act as one logical path. The
increase in bandwidth is equal to the port speed times the number of
ports trunked together. For example, if you were to trunk together
four 100 Mbps ports, the result would be 400 Mbps of bandwidth.
The AT-8316F and AT-8324 switches allow you to trunk together two,
four, or eight ports, providing 200 Mbps, 400 Mbps, or 800 Mbps of
throughput. You can also trunk the ports on an expansion module to
increase the bandwidth from an expansion module to another
network device.
When implementing a port trunk, you will need to observe the
following guidelines:
Guideline 1:
Number of
Ports in a Trunk
The number of ports in a port trunk must be 2, 4, or 8 ports.
Guideline 2:
Using Ports
from the Same
Group
The ports on the Ethernet switches are divided into groups. When
choosing ports for a port trunk, the selected ports must be members
of the same group. You cannot create a port trunk consisting of ports
from different groups.
The ports on an AT-8324 switch are divided into five groups, as
illustrated in Figure 2-4.
Figure 2-4 Port Groupings on an AT-8324 Switch
STATUS
RESET
FAULT
MASTER
RPS
PWR
10BASE-T / 100BASE-TX
FAST ETHERNET SWITCH
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
10BASE-T / 100BASE-TX
1X 3X 5X 7X
2X 4X 6X 8X
9X 11X 13X 15X
10X 12X 14X 16X
17X 19X 21X 23X
18X 20X 22X 24X
A
B
RS-232 TERMINAL PORT 100M LINK / ACTIVITY 10M LINK / ACTIVITY
HALF DUP/ COL FULL DUP
PORT ACTIVITY
L /A
L /A
D/C
D/C
L /A
D/C
Group A Group B Group C
Ports 1 to 8 Ports 9 to 16 Ports 17 to 24
Group D
Group E