I'm gonna set up a NAS using a mobo that has two gigabit nics. i'd like to do load balancing between the two nics so that if i'm copying 30 gigs off the nas to a computer, a media box can still reliably stream hi-def movies off it.

example:


nas
| |
SWITCH - router - internet
| | |
all other comps

Is this a question or a statement?

I'll assume it's a question. You're looking for link aggregation which is done with the bonding module and the ifenslave program. It sounds like you want the 802.3ad protocol which maximizes throughput, allowing full gigE speed (well, as full as is allowed with latency, overhead, etc. etc.) on each port. Your switch will need to support this protocol (called different things by different switches & the docs on load balancing with consumer switches is usually pretty sparse).

I run a Linksys managed switch. For my setup, I need to turn on "LACP" (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) and "LAG" (Link Aggregate Group) for all ports in the aggregate.

I've done this before with a Netgrear switch - it was a bit more convoluded... it's called something like vlan trunking. I think there's half a paragraph in the docs on it.

If your switch is not managed (ie, there's no web/telnet configuration interface), this will not work with a single switch.

for info on how to setup your machine, check out this link: http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/Bonding - all the info you'll need to know is there.

FYI: Your life will be easier if you *only* run the link aggregation... don't be fnacy & try to do a maintenance port or anything, just make the bond your main interface.

To test that everything is working, install and monitor all interfaces with "iptraf"


edit: As should be obvious, you may run into other issues, like hard drive speed/throughput, internal bandwidth, etc. My file server runs 2 64-bit procs, & has both the RAID & NIC's on 64-bit, 133MHz PCI-Express slots. My old file server was only running 1 32 bit proc & only used 32 bits of the 64-bit PCI Card & was running into lots of bandwidth issues.

thanks for the answer, shoulda put in teh actual question >_< you got it right though. i'll be using a single 64 bit proc and an areca pci-e raid card using 8 sata drives in raid 5. the computer currently has a gigabyte k8nxp-sli mobo which has two gigabit nics. thanks for the info on bonding, i'll have to see if i can get it working. =D

Thank's for the link, that's a very nice doc.