the des-1218 supports up to 5 trunk groups, the des-1226 can utilize up to 7 trunk groups.
with up to 4 ports in each group, a potential bit rate of 800 mbps can be achieved.
the switch treats all ports in a trunk group as a single port._data transmitted to a specific host (destination address) will always be transmitted over the same port in a trunk group. this allows packets in a data stream to arrive in the same order they were sent. a trunk connection can be made with any other switch that maintains host-to-host data streams over a single trunk port.
switches that use a load-balancing scheme and send packets of a host-to-host data stream over multiple trunk ports cannot have a trunk connection with the switch.
if the two gigabit ethernet ports are used as a trunk group and either port is disconnected, packets intended for the disconnected port will be dropped.