well, in windows, all i have to do is select the eth cards and click bridge. how do i do the same in slackware 10.0 kernel 2.6.7. i have 3 network cards connecting to a hud and one unplugged. also how do i find out which card is eth0, eth1 etc...? right now i'm just using the RX and TX from ifconfig to determine which cards r plugged which one is not. thx in advance =)

Bridging or routing?



Cheers,
Tink

bridging as in making 3 network cards to act as 1.

That would be load-balancing or something...

What exactly are you trying to achieve?


Cheers,
Tink

That's bonding, not bridging. Bridging in XP is bridging, it does not bond (though it likes to make you think it does). Read /usr/src/linux/Documentation/networking/binding.txt. Then compile a kernel with bonding support. If you still have questions come back.

The short answer is you need to build bonding into the kernel, and a bond virtual interface, then add the other interfaces to it. This is a gross over simplification but that is the idea.

EDIT: Why would you need this for home use though? Is this for a cluster or does it need harware level redundancy and routing?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Networking and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

cool thx for the info at least i have a sense of where i'm going now.

well, here's what i heard or at least it seems to be. my friends told me that if you had a cable modem and you hook it up to a 1 uplink 4 downlink hud, and then connect 4 network cards to it and "bridge" it. it gives you extra speed. well since i have some old network cards sitting in my old computers so i decided to give it a try. it seems to me that it does increase my download speed from some big servers by 150%. (i didnt test it thoroughly with small servers tho, but any increase in speed with no charge is always good =) ) i'm still a noob in networking, i have no idea y. maybe you guys can give me some explaination? anyways correct me if i'm wrong thx for the help

I'm afraid your mates may have no clue what they're talking
about ... unless of course your cable modem is in fact something
like an ATM 155MBit device, in which case you'd need two
network interfaces to exploit its performance. The common
cable modems that I've come across so far were in the
10 or less MBit/s category and easily enough fully facilitated
by any single 100MBit ethernet connection.


Cheers,
Tink

No, you friends are mistaken. Unless you have the best cable modem service I ever heard of, a cable modem generally has 1.5Mbps, maybe 3Mbps in some rare cases. Any ethernet card on the market today is at least a 10Mbps card. To put it another way, you can point 4 water hoses at a sink, but the drain is not going to get bigger.

At best you will be constrained by the 10Mbps connection going to the Cable Modem. If your cable Modem has a 100Mbps connetion then if ANY of your NICs are 100Mbps, then that one will do. On the outside chance you are in an alternate universe and have a Cable modem with Gigabit, contact me because I want to move there.

lol, thx mephisto and tinkster for explaining everything. well i guess, rather than trying to bond the cards, it's better to spend time to look for the anlternate universe =)

Glad you see the funny aspects, and hope
you'll educate your mates :} They shouldn't
spread that kind of "wisdom" any longer ;)


Cheers,
Tink

Yes, please keep your sense of humor.

It was meant as a joke not as a slight...