Port Pairs

A port-pair is a bidirectional connection in which traffic arriving on one port in the pair is transmitted out the other (and vice-versa) as a passthrough TAP. Keep in mind the following rules and notes for port-pairs:

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You can configure whether a port-pair uses link status propagation. Link port propagation does the following:

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Enabled—when one port in the pair goes down, the other port goes down.

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Disabled—when one port in the pair goes down, the other port is unaffected.

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Port-pairs can be established between ports using different speeds. For example, from a 100Mb port to a 1Gb port. However, the system will warn you when creating such port-pairs. Depending on traffic volume, port-pairs between ports using different speeds can cause packet loss when going from a faster port to a slower port. For example, going from 1Gb to 100Mb, from 10Gb to 1Gb, and so on.

To configure a port pair, do the following:

1.

Select Ports > Port Pairs.

2.

Click New.

3.

On the Port Pair page, do the following:

a.

(Optional) Type an alias in the Alias field to help identify this port pair.

b.

(Optional) Type a comment in the Comment field.

c.

Click in the First Port field and select a network port.

d.

Click in the Second Port field and select another network port.

e.

(Optional) Enable Link Failure Propagation.

Port pairs can operate with or without line failure propagation (LFP) as follows:

•

With LFP enabled, link failure on one of the ports in the port pair automatically brings down the opposite side of the port pair.

•

With LFP disabled, the opposite port is not brought down automatically.

Note: A port pair created on a copper TAP has LFP enabled by default.

4.

Click Save.