Types of network ports. Ports are either physical ports (NICs), or virtualized ports such as interface groups or VLANs. Interface groups treat several physical ports as a single port, while VLANs subdivide a physical port into multiple separate virtual ports. Interface group A port aggregate containing two or more physical ports that act as a single trunk port. An interface group can be single-mode, multimode, or dynamic multimode. VLAN A virtual port that receives and sends VLAN-tagged (IEEE 802.1Q standard) traffic. VLAN port characteristics include the VLAN ID for the port. The underlying physical port or interface group ports are considered to be VLAN trunk ports, and the connected switch ports must be configured to trunk the VLAN IDs.