What does this mean?

[HeroRareheart]

I installed DDWRT on my linksys e2500 and while poking around I found this setting labeled "link Aggregation on ports 3 and 4." I'm pretty sure that means I can effectively use both of those interfaces together in order to double the bandwidth going to one device but I'm unsure if that's correct or if any configuration needs to be done on the device itself to take advantage of this. Also why are my only options in the drop-down menu "no" and "trunk", no clearly means don't do that but what does trunk mean?

[PyCCo_TyPuCTo]

Trunk means it will pass all vlan traffic with vlan tags intact.

 

//edit: Just realized, the above refers to vlan trunking. What you have is a link aggregation trunking. See below:

 

Link aggregation

Sometimes, trunking refers specifically to port trunking, also known as link aggregation or Ethernet bonding. This is a method of combining individual Ethernet links to act as one logical link, potentially making it possible to overcome certain bandwidth limitations. This allows you to connect several switches with Ethernet ports and allocate traffic among all the ports, relieving switch-switch or switch-to-server congestion. If failover occurs, link aggregration enables faster recovery, as the signals simply use another port while still routing to the correct endpoint. As a result, this simultaneous packet transmission may result in improved performance. The IEEE standard for link aggregation is referred to as 802.1AX.

 

Source: https://www.n-able.com/blog/vlan-trunking

Edited March 9, 2022 by PyCCo_TyPuCTo
Clarification

[Kilrah]

3 hours ago, HeroRareheart said:

I'm pretty sure that means I can effectively use both of those interfaces together in order to double the bandwidth going to one device but I'm unsure if that's correct or if any configuration needs to be done on the device itself to take advantage of this.

Yes, the device on the other end needs a NIC that also supports link aggregation.

[HeroRareheart]

7 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Yes, the device on the other end needs a NIC that also supports link aggregation.

Would the Linux bonding driver be enough to get it working or does my NIC itself need to support it?