said by fonzbear2000:What exactly is that? Does it have anything to do with internet connections? What, if any, are the benefits of it to us? I'm looking for a super easy to understand explanation of this.
It's really just a higher capacity interface, like the bump from 100mbps Ethernet to gigabit Ethernet. This larger interface allows for more benefits in cases where you would normally have multiple links between devices.
Packets need to be kept in order from source to destination or you run into flow problems with layer 4 protocols like TCP. In order to accomplish this, routers hash traffic flows so that any given flow stays on one particular interface.
The problem carriers face today is that hashing has to be done at wire speed in hardware, so it cannot be traffic aware. This results in uneven loading.
Say you have 25gbps of traffic between Atlanta and Dallas. As a carrier, you might need 4 or 5 10gig links to carry that traffic because of the unevenness of the hashing algorithm.
When you increase your interface capacity to 100gig, you can aggregate more traffic together in fewer links.
Fewer, bigger links = increased efficiency, lower operational cost per mbps.