trunk 2 nics to one IP address

Submitted by spymaxx on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 02:09

Network Cards

Is it possible to trunk or combine 2 nic's in one mepis box to increase bandwith? I have a dell PE2550 sever that is being used in an accounting office. It has two nics built in. It could use the extra boost this could give. Any ideas?

Thanks

Trunk 2 nics

Submitted by erenkoff on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 05:09.

I do not know if Mepis provides the functionality (I am a MEPIS newbie) but the technology that you are looking for is called LACP. This is a standard for combining multiple ports into one logical port. That is the term that you need to look for. Also, you need to remember that the switch that you connect the server also needs to support LACP (or Nortels MLT) for this to work.

Is it the same thing as port

Submitted by spymaxx on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 09:26.

Is it the same thing as port trunking? In looking at the specs on the switch (SMCGS16-Smart) I did not see anything related to LACP. But port trunking is listed.

As you can see, I am trying to take the next step up from the very simple networking setup.

Thanks for your reply erenkoff!

Neat!

Submitted by Jon Du Quesne on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 12:23.

I tell ya erenkoff, here you are a Mepis newbie and you're already offering good advice (and I learned something too)!

I don't have much to offer, but thanks to your reference to LACP I did a Google search on "linux lacp howto" (without the quotes). Here are a couple links that I found:
samba throughput decreases to 50% when using linux bonding device
http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2005-July/042013.html

Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO
http://www.cyberciti.biz/howto/question/static/linux-ethernet-bonding-driver-howto.php

They are both within the year. I have not read either of them, but it looks like the second one might give you some ideas.

I am not on my 6.0 machine but I did do a check through the 3.3.1-1 repositories and didn't find anything in there. This doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but that it just may be a little difficult to get

Let me know what you find out.

Jon

LACP

Submitted by erenkoff on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 18:09.

I checked out the SMC website for the specs on the switch. They do offer a link aggregation feature, but I can not find out if it is LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) compliant. Try sending them an e-mail. Also check out the entry at...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation
and the other links on that page.

Also I noticed that some other people did mention in reply to your original message that there is some LACP support in MEPIS, go check it out, I know that I will.

Thanks guys for the help! I

Submitted by spymaxx on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 20:34.

Thanks guys for the help! I guess I got some more reading to do...

Ganging, Teaming and Bonding

Submitted by baldass_newbie on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 21:03.

Where I work this is usally referred to as either 'ganging' or 'teaming'.
You can search 'nic teaming' or 'nic bonding'.
Basically, you increase the bandwidth and secure against failover.
This may be a good resource as MEPIS is based on Debian.
Good luck and post your results. I've been kicking this idea around. I would like to hear a first hand account.
Regards.

---------------------------
ASUS A8V Deluxe
512 MB RAM
ATI Radeon 9200 AGP (ATI sucks don't buy their products)
80 Gig Maxtor Drive (the 60 Gig Maxtor died)

The more I read on this, the

Submitted by spymaxx on Thu, 09/21/2006 - 23:37.

The more I read on this, the more hesitant I am on trying it. I am to new to linux! I tried Mandriva Free, but struggled with it and samba. somtimes it worked, most of the time it did not. Then I switched to Mepis and have enjoyed it greatly. Even got samba running the first time! Now I have it running on 3 pcs. I guess if someone held my hand while I try it, I would go for it.

Thanks for the tip on what to search on, baldas!

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