About Trunking
Trunking, also known as VSAN trunking, is a feature specific to switches in the Cisco MDS 9000 Family. Trunking enables interconnect ports to transmit and receive frames in more than one VSAN, over the same physical link, using enhanced ISL (EISL) frame format.
The trunking feature includes the following restrictions:
- Trunking configurations are only applicable to E ports. If trunk mode is enabled in an E port and that port becomes operational as a trunking E port, it is referred to as a TE port.
- The trunk-allowed VSANs configured for TE ports are used by the trunking protocol to determine the allowed-active VSANs in which frames can be received or transmitted.
- If a trunking enabled E port is connected to a third-party switch, the trunking protocol ensures seamless operation as an E port.
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