Port Channel Overview
Port channels aggregate multiple physical interfaces into one logical interface to provide higher bandwidth, load balancing, and link redundancy.
A port channel performs the following functions:
- Increases the aggregate bandwidth on a link by distributing traffic among all functional links in the channel.
- Balances load across multiple links and maintains optimum bandwidth usage.
- Provides high availability. If one link fails, traffic carried previously on this link is switched to the remaining links. If a link goes down in a port channel, the upper protocol is not aware of it. To the upper protocol, the link is still there although the bandwidth is diminished. The MAC address tables are not affected by link failures.