Types of network ports

The network ports are either physical ports or virtualized ports. VLANs and interface groups constitute the virtual ports. Interface groups treat several physical ports as a single port, while VLANs subdivide a physical port into multiple separate logical ports.

physical ports

LIFs can be configured directly on physical ports.

interface group

A port aggregate containing two or more physical ports that act as a single trunk port. An interface group can be single-mode, multimode, or dynamic multimode.

VLAN

A logical port that receives and sends VLAN-tagged (IEEE 802.1Q standard) traffic. VLAN port characteristics include the VLAN ID for the port. The underlying physical port or interface group ports are considered VLAN trunk ports, and the connected switch ports must be configured to trunk the VLAN IDs.

The underlying physical port or interface group ports for a VLAN port can continue to host LIFs, which transmit and receive untagged traffic.

The port naming convention is enumberlettere<number>letter:

• The first character describes the port type.

  e represents Ethernet.

• The second character indicates the slot in which the port adapter is located.
• The third character indicates the port's position on a multiport adapter.

  a indicates the first port, b indicates the second port, and so on.

For example, eob indicates that an Ethernet port is the second port on the node's motherboard.

VLANs must be named by using the syntax port_name-vlan-id. port_name specifies the physical port or interface group and vlan-id specifies the VLAN identification on the network. For example, e1c-80 is a valid VLAN name.