• Switch 1.3.0
• Product Overview
  • Package Contents
  • Technical Specifications
  • Supported SonicWall and third-party SFP and SFP+ Modules
  • Physical Interface - 8 Port Switch
  • Physical Interface - 10 Port Switch
  • Physical Interface - 24 Port Switch
  • Physical Interface - 48 Port Switch
  • Device Management
  • Connecting the Switch to a Network
  • Capacity Matrix
• System Management
  • System
    • Dashboard
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      • SSH Settings
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      • Classic diagram of SonicWall Switch for SNMP Testing
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      • Add Target Address
      • Add Notify Setting
      • SNMP Traps/Informs
      • How to configure SNMP on SonicWall Switch
      • SNMP supported OID’s in 1.2.0.1-2s
      • How to Configure SNMP/MIB Browser on Client PC
    • Address Resolution Protocol
      • ARP Table
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      • Advanced
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          • Adding a Class Policy
        • Policy Mapping
    • Remote Network Monitoring
      • Stat List
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      • IPv4-Based ACE
  • VLAN
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• System Maintenance
• Switch Troubleshooting
  • Communication flow between Firewall and Switch before it gets authenticated
• SonicWall Support
  • About This Document

Link Aggregation

A Link Aggregation Group (LAG) optimizes port usage by linking a group of ports together to form a single, logical, higher-bandwidth link. Aggregating ports multiplies the bandwidth and increases port flexibility for the Switch. Link Aggregation is most commonly used to link a bandwidth intensive network device (or devices), such as a server, to the backbone of a network.

The participating ports are called Members of a port trunk group. Since all ports of the trunk group must be configured to operate in the same manner, the configuration of the one port of the trunk group is applied to all ports of the trunk group. Thus, you will only need to configure one of any of the ports in a trunk group. A specific data communication packet will always be transmitted over the same port in a trunk group. This ensures the delivery of individual frames of a data communication packet will be received in the correct order. The traffic load of the LAG will be balanced among the ports according to Aggregate Arithmetic. If the connections of one or several ports are broken, the traffic of these ports will be transmitted on the normal ports, so as to guarantee the connection reliability.

The ports and LAG must fulfill the following conditions:

• All ports within a LAG must be the same media/ format type.
• A VLAN is not configured on the port.
• The port is not assigned to another LAG.
• The Auto-negotiation mode is not configured on the port.
• The port is in full-duplex mode.
• All ports in the LAG have the same ingress filtering and tagged modes.
• All ports in the LAG have the same back pressure and flow control modes.
• All ports in the LAG have the same priority.
• All ports in the LAG have the same transceiver type

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is a dynamic protocol which helps to automate the configuration and maintenance of LAG’s. The main purpose of LACP is to automatically configure individual links to an aggregate bundle, while adding new links and helping to recover from link failures if the need arises. LACP can monitor to verify if all the links are connected to the authorized group. LACP is a standard in computer networking, hence LACP should be enabled on the Switch’s trunk ports initially in order for both the participating Switches/devices that support the standard, to use it.