Allied Telesis AT-S41 - Manual (Page 66)

AT-S41 User’s Guide
66
Port Trunking Overview
Port trunking is an economical way for you to increase the bandwidth
between an AT-8326GB switch and another network device, such as a
server, router, workstation, or another Ethernet switch.
A port trunk can consist of up to four 10/100 Mbps ports or two
10/100/1000 Mbps ports that have been grouped together to function
as one logical path to an end node. A port trunk increases the bandwidth
between a stack and an end node and can be useful in situations where
a single physical data link between a stack and an end node is
insufficient to handle the traffic load.
The port trunk always sends packets from a particular source to a
particular destination over the same link within the trunk. A single link is
designated for flooding broadcasts and packets of unknown destination.
Observe the following guidelines when creating a port trunk:
❑ Each AT-8326GB switch in a stack can support up to four port
trunks at a time.
❑ A port trunk can consist of up to four 10/100 Mbps ports or two
10/100/1000 Mbps ports.
❑ The ports of a port trunk must be of the same type. For example,
they can be all twisted pair ports or all fiber optic ports.
❑ The ports of a port trunk must reside on the same switch in a stack.
❑ The ports on the switch are divided into four port trunk groups.
The port members of each port group are shown below:
Port Group 1: ports 1-8
Port Group 2: ports 9-16
Port Group 3: ports 17-24
Port Group 4: ports 25-26
❑ Trunk port members must be within the same port trunk group.
❑ Slave switches in a switch stack only have the first three port trunk
groups. The 10/100/1000 Mbps ports on slave switches cannot
belong to port trunks.
❑ The duplex mode, speed, and flow control settings must be the
same for all the ports in a trunk.