Hi everyone

I'm trying to get mode 4 802.3ad port trunking / link aggregation working on our Ubuntu 8.04 file server.
We recently bought a new switch which supports 802.3ad (Netgear GS724T)
Since all the users are now connected to the server via Gigabit (before it was just the server->switch which was gigabit) that increases the chances of the server->switch link getting saturated with traffic. Admittedly with our usage and number of users it's unlikely... but I'd still like to look into getting this working.

I realise that 802.3ad won't give a 2x increase in capacity, but it should improve things and offer some redundancy if a link breaks for whatever reason. But mainly... I just want to tinker with this and get it working

At the moment I'm just using whatever drivers come pre-loaded when I installed Ubuntu 8.04
Both NICs on the server worked straight away when I installed Ubuntu, so I left it.

I've followed this guide (http://blog.brightbox.co.uk/posts/ho...buntu-properly) to enable trunking but I'm getting very inconsistent results... I now think it could be a driver issue.

The server motherboard is a Tyan s5211 based on an Intel 3210 chipset http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=591
From the specs in that link the LAN is 2 Intel 82573 ports and from this Intel specs (http://www.intel.com/design/network/...lers/82573.htm) it says it provides a standard 802.3* interface... so I assume that means it supports 802.3ad
In the Tyan manual it says 2 Intel i82573 GbE NICs (1*82573V+1*82573L) operating at independent PCI-E x1 interface.

I've found a Linux driver for the Intel 82573 GbE NICs here (http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...inux*&lang=eng)

1) Do I need to install that Intel driver to get this working properly?
2) Are there any other steps I need to do or should this http://blog.brightbox.co.uk/posts/ho...buntu-properly be enough to get it working?

Cheers, B