Hiya all!

Hope you haven't forgotten the crazy ol' sewer monkey just yet.

I have a question for you guys and gals... I remember reading in one of the issues of the Linux Journal about something called a slave/master network interface combination. If I remember correctly, what happens is that one of the interfaces is configured as a master, and the other is configured as a slave to that master... and, if memory serves me correctly, the slave just acts as an "extra 100mbit pipe" for the master interface (i.e. both interfaces bind to the same IP address, and you basically get the equivalent of a single 200mbit ethernet connection).

Note that I am pretty sure about the "master/slave" part, but not so sure about the IP address part.

I read this a while ago, and at the time I wasn't as tech savvy as I am now, so I just dismissed the article as something "cool" but useless to me at the time, but right now I'd like to look at this idea in more depth.

Thanks in advance!

Oh, and keep in mind that I haven't been on this site for quite a while, so if I mesed up something with this post, go easy on me.

Have you searched the www.linuxjournal.com website for the archive issues?

Regards,
Peter

I think it's called binding the devices. I'm sure there's (some) documentation in the kernel docs... I've heard of this before too and it sounds pretty cool! Of course, if you had a bound ethernet (i.e. 200Mbit), then you could only communicate at 200Mbit with other bound ethernet interfaces. Say, for example, you put 2 x 100Mbit NICs in one machine, bind them to 192.168.0.1 and connect both to a switch, then connect another machine to that switch that only has 1 x 100Mbit NIC, then communication between the two computers will be at a maximum of 100Mbit.

I did a search, actually. The problem is, I am not sure if it was published in the Linux Journal, the Embedded Linux Journal, or the Linux Journal e-newsletter... I tried to search the site as much as I could, but didn't find anything.

Thanks!!

Like they say, even a correct keyword can be 50% of the search effort!

Actually, I am researching into this for the college radio station. They want to do live audio (and possibly video in the future) broadcasting, and they will eventually (aspecially with video streams) need pretty fat pipes. Since they cannot afford multiple servers, I was researching into interface binding to be able to pump out twice the normal bandwidth... It's an experiment, but this solution sounds the most promising at this point.

Hehe! And I bet 10x100Mbit NICs is still cheaper than 1x1000Mbit NIC!

Actually, you read my mind, Thymox. Someone there actually wanted to fork out thousands for a gigabit pipe and equipment, but I protested and asked for some time to research into an alternative...