Interfaces Application#

The Interfaces application models physical ports on equipment, and is therefore one of the cornerstones of EDA. It provides the following components:

Interface types#

The Interface resource declaratively defines abstracted network interfaces for the range of supported network operating systems and supports three primary interface types:

• Standard Interface: Individual physical interfaces
• LAG (Link Aggregation Group): Bundled interfaces operating as a single logical link
• Loopback: Virtual interfaces for management and routing purposes

Breakout ports#

On networking equipment especially, physical ports can "break out" into multiple interfaces, through a breakout cable. This special cable splits a physical port with a higher capacity (e.g. 100G) into multiple lower capacity endpoints (e.g. 4 x 25G). Since this breakout cable has one "head" on one end and multiple "arms" on the other end, this cable is also known as an octopus cable.

• A Breakout resource configures the physical port on the node to support multiple physical endpoints (breakout ports)
• An Interface resource models one end of a physical link, with a unique endpoint

flowchart LR
    A((Port 1)) --> B
    B[Breakout CR\n4x25G] --> I1
    B --> I2
    B --> I3
    B --> I4
    I1[Interface CR 1] --> C1((Compute 1))
    I2[Interface CR 2] --> C2((Compute 2))
    I3[Interface CR 3] --> C3((Compute 3))
    I4[Interface CR 4] --> C4((Compute 4))