Reference Guide

Interfaces | 423
Port channel benefits
For the E-Series, a port channel interface provides many benefits, including easy management, link
redundancy, and sharing.
Port channels are transparent to network configurations and can be modified and managed as one interface.
For example, you configure one IP address for the group and that IP address is used for all routed traffic on
the port channel.
With this feature, the user can create larger-capacity interfaces by utilizing a group of lower-speed links.
For example, the user can build a 5-Gigabit interface by aggregating five 1-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
together. If one of the five interfaces fails, traffic is redistributed across the four remaining interfaces.
Port channel implementation
FTOS supports two types of port channels:
• Static—Port channels that are statically configured
• Dynamic—Port channels that are dynamically configured using Link Aggregation Control Protocol
(LACP). For details, see Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP).
Note: If you are using either 10G ports or 40G ports, the Z9000 supports 8 members per LAG
As soon as a port channel is configured, FTOS treats it like a physical interface. For example, IEEE
802.1Q tagging is maintained while the physical interface is in the port channel.
Member ports of a LAG are added and programmed into hardware in a predictable order based on the port
ID, instead of in the order in which the ports come up. With this implementation, load balancing yields
predictable results across line card resets and chassis reloads.
A physical interface can belong to only one port channel at a time.
Each port channel must contain interfaces of the same interface type/speed.
Table 21-45. Number of Port-channels per Platform
Platform Port-channels Members/Channel
E-Series TeraScale 255 16
E-Series ExaScale 512 64
C-Series 128 8
S-Series: S25 and S50 52 8
S55, S60 and S4810 128 8
Z9000 128 8