Overview of Port Breakout

NOTEs:

The 400GE and 200GE interfaces can be split into two or four ports, and the 40GE and 100GE interfaces can only be split into four ports.
You must reboot system to make the setting take effect after performing port breakout or merge operation.

An optical interface with high bandwidth can be split into multiple independent low-bandwidth interfaces, which can improve the interface density, reduce the usage cost and increase the network flexibility.

The switch interface can be split into two or four ports. After the interface is split, the configurations and features remain unchanged, while it is named in a different way. For example, the optical interface xe-1/1/5 is split into four logical interfaces with names of xe-1/1/5.1~xe-1/1/5.4.

The split interface can be connected by a common cable or a breakout cable. If interfaces of both terminals are split in the same way, you can use the common cable, and the spilt interfaces are logically connected one to one; if only the interface of one terminal is split, you need use the breakout cable to connect two terminals, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1. The breakout cable