if i have 2 nic cards configured on a linux box,will all the default traffic go thru eth0 until unless it fails? then if it does will it go through eth1?

thx,
rn

no
such behavior is a bit hard to configurate...
actually, trafic look at "route" to know where it should go (type : route -n).

If your network card fail the trafic will fail, unless you set up a bridge, you are using a routing daemon or you have some fall-over (round and robin) firewall rules.

what's a bridge?

thanks for the explanation. how do must linux admins accomplish nic failover??

ryan

depend of what you are trying to do exactly... some basic easy failover would be to add an iptables rules to do round and robin. I think it could be reliable, even if half of the packet will be dropped is case of failure.
A rules like "iptables -A OUTPUT -s 0/0 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.2 --to-destination 192.168.0.3" could work I *think*.

And wza, I'm not an expert 'bout bridge and such thing but I think you can use some apps to make 2 machine to have the same IP and then to communicate only with mac adress, or something like that.