Channel bonding is a computer networking arrangement in which two or more network interfaces on a host computer are combined for redundancy or increased throughput. Channel bonding is differentiated from load balancing in that load balancing divides traffic between network interfaces on per network socket (OSI model layer 4) basis, while channel bonding implies a division of traffic between physical interfaces at a lower level, either per packet (OSI model Layer 3) or a data link (OSI model Layer 2) basis.