This article was first written in February 2006 for the BeezNest technical website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/325).This technology is meant to merge several network links into one logical, providing with higher availability and higher throughput (while it is not absolutely necessary to use both aspects at the same time). Some vendors call it Trunking (ex.: Sun) or Link Aggregation. It's all the same technology, and they communicate together rather well.
