Port Channel

[kartik6446]

What is a port channel on a switch? Can anyone explain?

[ankbhasi]

Hi Kartik,

In very basic terms port channel is a kind of logical interface which is created when more than 1 physical ports are binded together using channel group command.

See if this link helps you

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat3750/12240se/scg1/swethchl.htm#wp1275595

Please come back if you have more doubts.

HTH

Ankur

[Jon Marshall]

Hi

A port channel on a switch is a logical connection that consists of one or more physical connections - this is basically what etherchannel is about.

So lets say you have 2 switches and you want to connect them together. But for bandwidth you want to connect them with 2 x 1Gbps ports. If you connect them with 2 separate ports then STP will only utilise one of the links per vlan. So you can "group" the 2 links together to form one link of 2Gbps ie.

gi0/1

gi0/2 are the physical ports

po1 is the logical port channel port that consists of gi0/1 & gi0/2.

HTH

Jon