Overview Interface

The interfaces supported by the device can be divided to physical interface and logical interface. The physical interface includes L2 Ethernet interface and L3 Ethernet interface; logical interface includes aggregation group interface, VLAN interface, Loopback interface, Null interface, Tunnel interface and so on.

L2 Ethernet interface, also called port, is one physical interface. It works in layer 2 in the OSI reference model-Data link layer and is mainly used for the data frame forwarding and MAC address learning.

L3 Ethernet interface is one physical interface and works in layer 3 in the OSI reference model-network layer. It can configure IP address and is mainly used to forward packets.

Aggregation group interface is one logical interface, formed by binding multiple physical links between two devices. It also works at the data link layer and is mainly used to expand the link bandwidth and improve the link reliability.

VLAN interface is one logical interface, used to be bound with VLAN and complete the packet forwarding between different VLANs.

Loopback interface, also called local loopback interface, is one logical interface. For the packets sent to the Loopback interface, the device regards that the packets are sent to the device itself, so it does not forward the packets.

Null interface is one logical interface. Any packet sent to Null interface is dropped.

Tunnel interface is one logical interface, providing the transmission link for the point-to-point mode.

For different interfaces, there are corresponding configuration modes. The related configuration modes of the interfaces include:

• Interface configuration mode, corresponding to VLAN interface, Loopback interface, Null interface, and Tunnel interface
• L2 Ethernet interface configuration mode, corresponding to L2 Ethernet interface
• L3 Ethernet interface configuration mode, corresponding to L3 Ethernet interface
• Aggregation group configuration mode, corresponding to aggregation group interface