Overview - HP procurve 8100fl series Management And Configuration Manual

Link Aggregation Configuration

Overview

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7-2

Overview

This chapter explains how to configure:
■ A manual (or static) Link Aggregate Group (LAG) on the switch
A dynamic link using Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP).
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Link aggregation on the 8100fl switch has the following features and charac­
teristics:
Link aggregation performs load balancing (based on the aggregation hash
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applied on the ingress ports), and load sharing across a number of ports.
■ Link aggregation builds high-performance, high-bandwidth links between
ProCurve's switching platforms.
A link aggregation is a group of two or more physical ports that have been
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combined into a single logical port.
■ Multiple physical connections between devices are aggregated into a
single, logical, high-speed path that acts as a single link.
■ As flows are set up on the LAG, traffic is balanced across all ingress ports
in the combined link, balancing overall available bandwidth.
Link aggregations also provide improved data link resiliency—if one link
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fails, its flows are distributed among the remaining links.
■ Link aggregations can interoperate with switches, routers, and servers
from other vendors.
■ Link aggregations allow administrators to increase bandwidth at conges­
tion points in the network, eliminating potential traffic bottlenecks.
Link aggregations are compatible with all switch features, including
■
VLANs, STP, VRRP, and so on. In fact, switch link aggregation supports
the bridging of any type of traffic, including protocols not currently
supported. Non-IP traffic is passed using the source and destination MAC
headers. IP traffic is passed on L2, L3, or L4 header information.
The hash function distributes traffic making sure that each traffic stream uses
the same link so packets do not have to be reordered. At Layer 2, a hash
function is applied to the SMAC, DMAC addresses and vid. At Layer 3, hashing
is based on the IPv4 source address and IPv4 destination address fields. The
8100fl switch also supports hashing based on Layer 4 SP and DP fields of the
frame. You can configure hashing independently of the LAG mode; for exam­
ple, you can use L4-based hashing on an L2 LAG.