Port Channeling
Depending on your network configuration, you might need to configure port channeling to provide a data feed to your sensor. This guide illustrates several example configurations with the EDA 9200.
- Port channels can be configured on all rack-mounted ExtraHop sensors.
- Port channels can combine 10/25 GbE ports or 1 GbE ports; however, 1 GbE and 10/25 GbE ports cannot be combined.
- Port channels must be configured on interfaces that are set as monitoring ports.
- Port channels must have a static configuration. LACP is not supported.
- Port channels can spread a single flow across multiple physical interfaces which can
negatively affect performance, store data as uni-directional traffic, and result in incomplete
protocol analysis. Complete one of the following steps to avoid these issues:
- Turn on symmetric hashing on the switch. A single flow (both received and transmitted) is sent to a single port on the Discover appliance.
- Enable software RSS on the sensor to ensure that all flow packets are reassembled before analysis begins.
The following diagram shows the back panel of the EDA 9200. Slots 1 and 4 represent the NICs receiving data.
![](/images/9.3/eda-9200-back.png)
Four data sources (port channeling not required)
As a comparison, the following diagram shows four sources of traffic going to the four 10/25 GbE ports on the appliance.
![](/images/9.3/port_chan_four_data.png)
Two data sources with two channels (port channeling required)
The following diagram shows two sources of traffic fed through two port channels going to the four 10/25 GbE ports on the appliance.
![](/images/9.3/port_chan_two_source.png)
One data source with one channel (port channeling required)
The following diagram shows one source of traffic fed through one port channel going to the four 10/25 GbE ports on the appliance.
![](/images/9.3/port_chan_one_source.png)
One data source with two channels (port channeling required)
The following diagram shows one source of traffic fed through two port channels going to the four 10/25 GbE ports on the appliance. The first port channel is sent to the two ports on the NIC in slot 1 and the second port channel is sent to the remaining two ports on the NIC in slot 4. This configuration does not require symmetric hashing.
![](/images/9.3/port_chan_one_source_two.png)
Thank you for your feedback. Can we contact you to ask follow up questions?