Open Learning

I just finished Module 7 and boy, am I confused.

What is a aggragate link for? Is it just to bond 2 links together to act as one?

How do I configure a group and apply it to interfaces?

It's exactly that, aggregating two or more physical ports to create one logical one. It increases the bandwith of the link. It also provides redundancy without worrying about looping. If one of the physical ports goes down you will still have connectivity.

There is only one STP instance for the logical port, not multiple STP instances for each port in the aggregate.

As far as configuring in Juniper, I will let someone else address that as I am still learning Juniper myself.

I found this link describing the CLI procedures for configuring on Juniper. The protocol we are talking about is LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol)

https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos/topics/task/configuration/link-aggregation-cli.html

You basically create a logical interface "ae0", Add which physical interfaces are going to belong to that LAG (Link aggregation Group), and define some parameters.

Once the LAG is setup you make all the configuations under that "ae" interface such as VLAN tagging, IP addresses, etc.

Thanks! That confirms what I thought about LAG and LACP.

Now about groups...

Hello Seeley4859 you're welcome. 

Configuration groups allow you to define common settings once and apply them later. For example, a switch may have dozens of ports that all need to be configured as Layer 2 ports on the same VLAN. Instead of configuring the same thing dozens of times for each interface do it once in a configuation group and then apply the configuration group to the interfaces branch of the configuation. 

https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos/topics/concept/junos-software-configuration-groups-understanding.html

Thanks again for using the forum. 

Gordon

Thanks for the info on configuration groups. Thats a very interesting and useful feature I had no idea about.

Thanks for using the forum douglas.alexander. It makes it easy for everyone to help.

Gordon

Very helpful as always, Gordon. Thanks again!

Hello douglas.alexander and Seeley4859.

Great job sharing information. That link is spot on. Thanks for helping.

Gordon