How to configure trunk on Cisco Catalyst Switch

Hello Giovanni

Unlike Access and Trunk ports, the Hybrid port does not have exactly the same meaning across all vendors. Each vendor will use a different terminology for various types of ports that have particular extra features beyond a simple trunk or access port.

For Cisco, the hybrid port is a feature of higher-end Cisco carrier grade switches, such as the ME1200 for example. Hybrid ports are very well described by Cisco in this documentation like so:

Hybrid ports resemble trunk ports in many ways, but adds additional port configuration
features. In addition to the characteristics described for trunk ports, hybrid ports have these abilities:

  • Can be configured to be VLAN tag unaware, C-tag aware, S-tag aware, or S-custom-tag
    aware.
  • Ingress filtering can be controlled.
  • Ingress acceptance of frames and configuration of egress tagging can be configured
    independently

Carrier networks often use QinQ with an outer and inner VLAN tag to separate customer traffic. The C-tag mentioned in the above quote is the Customer tag, or the inner tag, and the S-tag is the Service tag or the outer tag.

So a hybrid port is able to provide additional features that are useful to carriers. An example of a configuration of a hybrid port along with several of the features it delivers can be found at the following Cisco documentation:

Because this is not part of any exam content, and because for Cisco, it is a feature that is limited to a particular specialized kind of switch, there are no lessons concerning this on the site.

I hope this has been helpful!

Laz