Combining 2 NIC

I have plenty 3CR990 from 3com wich I'd like to combine at least 2 NIC.

Do I get double performance/bandwith if I do so?

Can 1 traffic/stream go to the 2 NIC at parallel processing?

Regards,
Boby

Originally Posted by Bobymc I have plenty 3CR990 from 3com wich I'd like to combine at least 2 NIC. Do I get double performance/bandwith if I do so? Can 1 traffic/stream go to the 2 NIC at parallel processing? Regards, Boby

if you use both NICs with your current (i assume single) Internet connection, then it would be pointless - you wouldn't be achieving anything (at least not any speed gain)...

on the other hand, if you use the new card to connect to a new second ISP then you could do some neat stuff and increase the performace for the box and the hosts on the LAN if it's a router/firewall...

Win32sux:

Have you actually done this? Is there anything more than iptables required to implement it? Any more details would be very interesting.

--- rod.

Originally Posted by theNbomr Win32sux: Have you actually done this? Is there anything more than iptables required to implement it? Any more details would be very interesting.

i assume you're refering to the usage of two (or more) Internet connections... you'd need iptables and iproute2... no, i haven't done it, personally (although i've done plenty reading on the subject) - i only have one cable modem connection... i might be able to pull it off (for educational purposes) by using a dial-up connection alongside my cable modem connection - although it would obviously suck bigtime...

in any case, i can suggest a great linux journal article on the subject:

Policy Routing for Fun and Profit

Hello Bobymc,

I think you need to do ethernet bonding for combining multiple NICs. Ethernet bonding refers to the process by which the network cards are bonded or tied up virtually by the aid of the OS. It is mainly used for load balancing. If you have the kernel source installed, the documentation will exist under networking section called bonding.txt. You will need to recompile the kernel to include ethernet bonding if it does not support the feature. After that you need to edit the /etc/modules.conf or /et/modprobe.conf (depends on ur distro and add the line 'alias bond0 bonding'. This would load the module on request.
The next part seems the most important.. You need to create a new configuration file for the virtual 'bond' interface. Copy your config: file for the ethernet interface and edit as follows:
DEVICE=bond0
IPADDR=X.X.X.X
NETMASK=X.X.X.X
NETWORK=X.X.X.X
BROADCAST=X.X.X.X
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
Now as the next step, edit the config: files for your real NICs and add the following config:.
DEVICE=ethX
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
BOOTPROTO=none

This step has to be done for each and every one of your NIC, replacing ethX with that of your config:. After the config: restart network service or issue the command ' ifup bond0' which would bring the bonding interface up. Issue 'ifconfig' to see whether the interface is up...

Hope this was what you were after.Contact in case of need........

Thanks,,,

yeah, it sounds like bonding was probably what he was asking about...

when one doesn't provide enough details with one's question, one can expect to get some suggestions which aren't really related to one's actual concern... and experience shows that when someone finally does contribute something relevant (as the bonding thing probably is) the OP will typically thank that person and ignore the rest...

well, at least theNbomr found the ISP-sharing thing sort of interesting... personally, i learned a lot when i read that article in linux journal a couple years ago - in the actual, physical magazine...

a question about the bonding: could you provide some examples of when bonding is a good idea?? if you just wanna throw some links my way that would be cool too...

Hello,

Many a URL exist in the internet depicting about ethernet bonding. Some of them are:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern...ng/bonding.txt

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hint...et-bonding.txt

http://www.devco.net/archives/2004/1...et_bonding.php

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/e...e-connect.html

etc..................


I hope you all get the idea clearly...... Please reply in case....

Thanks...

i see now that hardware fault-tolerance is one of the selling-points for bonding...

i'll read-up on this... thanks for the links, vimal!!!

I assume all response are good.

I did modem-bonding on windoze some time ago.(requires ISP with identical multiple login)=depend on ISP policy

I havent try anything with this kind of theory on eth.
Wouldnt it be so great if we can get it also from ether-bond.

Thanks for a very helpfull comments.
CU guys soon.

((didnt realize that some do the same thing))

Sorry for the late respon, I've been busy maintaining other CPU.

I'd just try the bonding on DELL cpu with RH9.0 inside(default CPU-NIC and 3comCR990) It just works out fine, except that Rh9 keep asking me userid and password though I've given all-rights from FC5.

here's some comand I'd run from terminal;

modprobe bonding mode=0 miimon=100
ifconfig bond0 10.2.2.3 netmask 255.0.0.0 up
ifenslave bond0 eth0

Anyway I lost the 'bond' if I reboot the system, I guess I must do what Vimal said.

Regards

Hello all,

Thanks everybody, especially Vimal for I needed the same thing

Thanks again

Hello again,

Actually, I needed to know about combining two internet connections.
But its great to have found other things like bonding too!

I needed following things:-

This is about how to combine two internet connections to increase bandwidth , load balancing and fault tollerance.


In detail : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multihoming
Technical http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7134
simplest http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html
Discussion http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/28886
LOad balancing:- http://tetro.net/misc/multilink.html

Hope, someone in future will benefit from this

I didnt read from nowhere, just did it because I have 2 modem and 2 phone lines N my ISP supports that.