Trunking is a networking technology that allows switches to connect multiple VLANs over a single network connection. This is useful for a number of applications. It also helps to avoid congestion on network connections. The service is available on a wide range of equipment, from phone systems to data networks. Compared to conventional LANs, trunking can provide more bandwidth for data and voice traffic.

Before using this service, you need to know what it is. In addition, you will need to know the differences between trunking and software development. Generally, the operation of trunking is almost transparent to the user. You will hear a “go ahead” beep when you first start communication. However, you will need to monitor the status of the trunk and the instances on the network.

A trunk is a port on a switch that carries all the VLANs on the switch. Each VLAN is assigned its own unique name. To transport frames through a trunk, each frame is tagged with a specific VLAN ID. When you send a frame over the port, the receiving switch uses this packet tag to associate the packet with the correct VLAN. On the other hand, if the sending device cannot handle VLANs, the packet is not forwarded.

Typical configuration for a trunk involves two ports: a parent port and a subport. Each port can support a single VLAN, or it can be configured to support multiple VLANs. Usually, a VLAN-enabled port is classified as tagged or untagged.

If you are a novice in this field, the easiest way to learn about trunking is to take a look at the example below. Note that each trunk can have many subports. Depending on your needs, you may want to consider a customised NIC with an onboard processor to reduce CPU strain.

For a trunk to be operational, you need to make sure that it has a private parent port. If you launch an instance on a port, it should respond to ping on the private parent port IP address.

If a trunk is in the BUILD or ERROR state, you will need to bring it to a sane state. Once you have brought the trunk to a sane state, you can add or remove subports. Some subports are not supported on the trunk, and they will not be present in the list of subports.

Adding and removing instances on a trunk is a simple process. Once you have established a parent port and a subport, you can create a port on the other switch. After the port is created, you can assign a security group to the port.

In addition, you can define a dependency on the trunk. You can set this up with a get_attr or depends_on command. Also, you can specify the MAC addresses of the subports that you want to assign to the trunk.

You can use a Heat template to create a trunk and instances. Alternatively, you can manually configure the trunk and its instances.