Port-Channel VS Virtual Port – Channel Difference in Port Channel & Virtual Port-Channel
Priyanka Shyam
CCDE (Written) | CWNA | Cisco SCOR | CISCO SD-WAN | Technical Writer | Influencer | Multitasker | Considerate | Empathic | Excellent Communicator | Helpful
Well sometimes port-channel and virtual port-channel is a confusing topic, today I will explain the basic difference between these two and later in my next article I will demonstrate the lab part.
A port-channel is a technology using which we aggregate or bond multiple interfaces together.?Traffic is then load balanced across each of the connection.
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Port-channels provides below three benefits:
?Redundancy-- If any one of the interface will fail then the traffic will quickly shift to the other interface.
Bandwidth ---?Increases in bandwidth due to bundling multiple interfaces together.
Spanning tree ---- STP sees port-channels as a single switchport.
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"Though the port-channels are great the problem is that all links within the bundle must be connected to the same switch".
?vPC (Virtua; Port-channel )
?vPC (Virtual Port-Channel) also known as multi-chassis ether channel (MEC) is a feature on the Cisco Nexus switches using which you can configure port-channel across multiple switches (i.e vpc peers).
Here you can see that Virtual Port channel (vPC) is configured using the interfaces of two switches.
?One of the key difference between the two technologies (port-channel and virtual port-channel )?is that port channels support both Layer 2 and Layer 3. vPC on the other hand only supports Layer 2.
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ET at USPS
2 年Thank you for sharing. Please, continue with Cisco subjects!
Senior Designer
2 年So, in vPC we can bundle ports from different switches to form a port channel which is an advantage over traditional port channel, right?