Subject: RE: NIC Teaming
From: Christopher E. Brown (cbrown@woods.net)
Date: Fri Apr 05 2002 - 15:01:33 AKST
On Sun, 24 Jan 1999 aklug@mail.arcadia.2y.net wrote:
>
> Through some research I have finally found exactly what I am looking for. There
> is a web site which I do not have the address of at the moment that compared
> benchmarks for NIC Teaming via hardware/drivers and Software. The option that
> came out number one was "NIC Express" from http://www.ipmetrics.com
>
> I downloaded the trial software but have not tested it myself. The downfall to
> this software is that it is a 30 day evaluation program, then you must purchase
> it...unfortunatly for a price of $349.00 per server, or $495.00 for Enterprise
> manager.
>
> This is a pretty pricy utility, but it has downloads for both Windows and
> Linux. I will write more once I test the software.
The basic is know as Ethernet channel bonding/Cisco EtherChannel/Sun
EtherTrunking.
Linux 2.2 and later support it very, very well, known as the bonding
drive, and must be built as a module.
Use is simple, build kernel with bonding enabled.
Insert module, will create new bonding device (normally bond0 for first
Use bondconfig tool (bonding.c tells you where to get it) to add
various ethernet cards to the bond.
use ifconfig or ip to configure the bond0 interface like a regular
interface.
Of course, the switch you are talking to MUST support etherchannel
A simple thing to do!
Split the networks...
2 cards in server
2 switches
2 dhcp ranges
So long as server based games are used not everyone needs to talk to
everyone else.
As to bonding, it is very, very useful, but the SWITCH *must* support
it as well, otherwise you only have double pipe outbound and once the
packet rate climbs you drive the switch nuts (MAC addr keeps switching
ports, normally switch calls this an error and locks out the ports, or
if to stupid for this goes braindead rewriting its MAC table
50,000/sec)
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