Hi mates : )

Here is my question,

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please visit the link below and see my question.

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OR

you can read it below,

here is the problem:

There are 2 PCs (PC A and PC B)and one ethernet switch.

---PC B---
PC B(LINUX RED HAT 8.0) has 4 fast ethernet cards installed on it. All four ethernet ports of the PC B are connected to the switch.
Assigned IP Addresses On computer B’s ethernet ports:
eth 0: 10.10.10.1
eth 0: 10.10.10.2
eth 0: 10.10.10.3
eth 0: 10.10.10.4

---PC A---
PC A has 1 fast ethernet card installed on it.
4 command Line windows are open on the PC,
a ping command runs on each window at the same time.

Command Line Window 1: > ping 10.10.10.1
Command Line Window 2: > ping 10.10.10.2
Command Line Window 3: > ping 10.10.10.3
Command Line Window 4: > ping 10.10.10.4

---------------
Purpose of the setup: Ping 4 ethernet ports of PC B from PC A at the same time

Problem: Since all the IP addresses of the PC B are in the same network (10.10.10.0) ping replies come back to PC A only from eth1 (It is the first ethernet port shown on the routing table of the PC B).

From PC A’s point of view, it looks ping replies come from all 4 ports. But when you unplug the eth1's connection, all of the 4 windows on PC A shows: “request time out”

Question: We want PC B to reply packets from all of it’s 4 ports. Is it possible to make this setup work on Linux (with the same IP addresses).

PS: I know assigning different network IP addresses to PC B’s ports is much better idea but cant do it due to my unique situation.
Strange but with the same setup and same IP assignment, it works properly if the PC B’s operating system is XP

I'll really appreciate If anybody can help me, thanks in advance : )

ahalnet

I do not know if I can help but a couple of things. Is the switch a netgear switch (they have a bad history with linux and ping). I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish with this setup but I suspect you might want to look at channel bonding (teaming or trunking are other names) in a failover mode for high availability of connection or in mode 6 for high through put.

Just a couple of random thoughts.

Lazlow

Have you assigned the ips in seperate interfaces or as the suinterface of the ethX ?

hi avijitp

I have assigned the IP addresses to seperate interfces. (each of the 4 rhysical ethernet ports has it's own IP address. by teh way tx for helping.

lazlow,

tx for your attempt to help. it's not a netgear.

If you assign IPs with the same subnet to different eth interfaces, you need add routing rules.
Otherwise, your system will simply say:
"ping 10.0.0.x"
=> Hmmm. It's subnet 10.0.0. And eth0 (or eth1) is on that subnet.
The packets should thus be sent out via that interface.
Hence it'll always use the same interface to send out the ping packets.

Check out the "route" command and search this forum for similar threads. I've seen a few of them around.