Whats The Difference Between A Port And An Interface?

in CCNA & CCENT
Hello all,
I'm currently going through my CCNA prep and I'm kinda confused between the terminology. Whats the difference between a port and an interface on a switch?
I'm currently going through my CCNA prep and I'm kinda confused between the terminology. Whats the difference between a port and an interface on a switch?
Comments
adassus,
To me, the difference between a port and an interface is hardware and software. The port is where you plug in the physical cable connector. The interface is what you configure in the Cisco IOS, therefore is the software representation of the physical port.
I hope this helps.
In short
Logical Port = Logical Interface
Physical Port = Physical Interface
Be careful of the word "port" used in different context. Some may be referring to TCP or UDP ports instead of physical layer ports. This is the only rational difference i see between port and interface. The TCP port, this specifies a virtual port at layer 4 or the OSI.
lol...but hey I know some instructors that refer to TCP or UDP ports as "virtual service interfaces" like DNS uses port 53 which is its virtual service interface.
Hope this helps...
Kenny
That is basically what I said before I edited my post. Reason why I edited it was that I later read the part that says "on a switch". When configuring a which you can have all kinds of logical interfaces like interface vlan 1 or an etherchannel interface that is not a physical interface. When you say something like port 1 or port 24 people are generally referring to the physical port.
console port
network interface
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