Network Bonding Diagnosis
 

I am trying to setup tree network cards and bond them to increase bandwidth. They are all 10/100mbs. I followed the how to from HowToForge Network Bonding with Ubuntu 6.10 I am currently using Ubuntu Hardy 8.04.1 but I figured it was close enough. Anyways I went through the sets but I am not sure if it was successful. My first question if how do I test it? When I run ifconfig and have bond0 and eth0 but when I download from/to the server only one card, eth0, has activity.(The other cards aren't listed.) I suppose that could be because the other cards aren't needed. But it could also be because of my error. How do I find out? I am running bonding mode 0 I didn't want to stay too far from the tutorial this is my first set-up.

Two side notes:

output of mii-tools two cards have flow-control and eth0 doesn't. Could this cause any problems. Pertaining to my issue or otherwise.

ethtools gave no output,well "No data available" or something of that sort, for eth2 and eth3. I tried googling for information or a possible solution but no information.

cheers
snares

Any other info on the topic you wish to leave would be gladly accepted.

The only way you will really see any increase in speed is if both ends of the connection have three (assumed from tree) cards. You mention eth0,eth2,and eth3 what happened to eth1? If you have a router in between the two machines it has to be capable of handling bonded interfaces.

I assume the same goes for switches. I'll have to check on the specs of my switch to see. eth1 is the onboard ethernet which doesn't work. thank you for the response. Any thoughts about the two side notes?

cheers
snares

While looking at the specs of my switch, I didn't see anything about bonding support by the way, I thought about your post. If it wont increase speed at all would it be better for me to set-up a GB switch and NIC with some CAT6 cable? Perhaps add in a second bonded NIC just for fault tolerance? Would that be a better route to go?

To tell the truth after fighting it for about six months I gave up on bonding. I bought three GigE nics ($15 ea with shipping) and a GigE switch($30). Each channel of a 10/100 bond will carry 9.5MB/sec (if you are extremely lucky). GigE will handle 80MB/sec even if it is configured poorly. Bumping up the hardware is easily worth the money. There are a lot of used GigE nics floating around and there is basically nothing that goes wrong with them(assuming no physical or electrical abuse).

Okay I guess I will just upgrade my infrastructure to GB Ethernet. Thank you for the help.

cheers
snares