NIC-Bonding

• Prepare System
  • Bonding Modes

Prepare System

First install ‘mii-diag’ and ‘ifenslave’ packages, check links of network interfaces and load modules.

# apt-get install mii-diag ifenslave

# mii-tool
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok
eth1: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok
eth2: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok

# modprobe bonding
# modprobe mii

ifconfig will show you a new interface named ‘bond0’ now.

# ifconfig -a
bond0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
        BROADCAST MASTER MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
        RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
        TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
        collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
        RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

Now edit ‘/etc/modprobe.d/aliases’ and add the following lines.
You need to change ‘via_rhine‘ to the driver name, which is used by your network hardware.

# /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
alias bond0 bonding
alias eth1 via_rhine
alias eth2 via_rhine
options bonding mode=0 miimon=100

Bonding Modes

Modus	Name	Usage	Comment
0	balance-rr	Loadbalancing & Reliability	This mode is sending data round-robin over all interfaces participating in the bond. Inbound traffic can reach a max. thruput of one single participating interface.
1	active-backup	Reliability	As the name is telling us, only one interface is active. All other interfaces are in standby and get activated only if the currently active interface failes somehow.
2	balance-xor	Loadbalancing & Reliability	This modes calculates the interface to use by XORing the source and destination ethernet addresses and the number of participating interfaces
3	broadcast	Reliability	Data is sent on all participating at the same time.
4	802.3ad	Loadbalancing & Reliability	802.3ad standard can be used if you have interfaces with the same settings like transmission rates or duplex to achieve a higher bandwidth. You can’t connect to more that one switch and the switch itself needs to support 802.3ad standard. Also, you need to have ethtool and mii-tool installed.
5	balance-tlb	Loadbalancing	Like balance-xor but the algorhythm is more complex and more effective. You need to have ethtool installed.
6	balance-alb	Loadbalancing	Extended balance-tlb, additionally to outbound connections also inbound connections are balanced. You need to have ethtool installed.

Add the following line to your ‘/etc/modprobe.d/actions’

# /etc/modprobe.d/actions

probeall bond0 eth1 eth2 bonding

Update your system environment

update-modules

Edit your /etc/network/interfaces

# /etc/network/interfaces

auto bond0
iface bond0 inet static
 address 192.168.0.100
 netmask 255.255.255.0
 hwaddress ether 00:40:33:E2:65:87
 gateway 192.168.0.1
 up ifenslave bond0 eth1 eth2
 down ifenslave -d bond0 eth1 eth2

Check if everything is set.
Watch the logs during the following.

rmmod bonding
modprobe bonding

/etc/init.d/networking stop
/etc/init.d/networking start

If everything works fine, pull the cable of for example eth2.
Again, watch the logs during doing that.