Channel bonding , nic teaming
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Hello All,
Trying to get the kinks out of my first install -pfSense 1.2.3- .
I was very surprised when I done a search of my topic headline no one else here has asked the same question. Curious why pfSense does not offer nic teaming ,channel bonding as an option. Example. The box that I set up as the pfSense machine has an open nic port .Has two onboard( for our two wans) and one Intel dual port nic card. I was hoping to be able to do a nic teaming with the dual port card to feed into our lan switch for possibly a little bit better throughput.
Has anyone here ever done any real world calculations in regards to nic teaming? Also are there any electrical engineers here that can tell me if the dual port intel card has much less performance,than say two single port intel cards on two different pci bus slots? I always wondered what the differences are here.
Just thinking out loud…:-).Thanks,
BC -
lagg support is in 2.0
Which dual-port card are you talking about?
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Hi Gruens,
Cool! Thanks for the feedback.. I guess I wasn't using the right terminology in xxxBSD speak. It appears the bsd'ers call it link aggregation,,which makes sense…:-) There are many acronyms for it ,it seems. Us hillbillies call it ' tie n' two or more nics together',,,
The machine has the dual port intel server card,in it (besides the two onboard nics) which is one of the available ports unused. Onbard nics being used by the two wans.
I may give 2.0 a spin just to see how the link aggregation works. I may be better off just using one gigE nic as far as that goes. I am guessing in reality that would be a better performing interface,if the demand requires it.Thanks again for the info.
Regards,
Barry -
I mean which intel dualport NIC.
There are only like a few dozen ;)bu yeah, if you need the bandwidth i would go with gbit ethernet.
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Hi Gruens,
Thanks for the helpful information on all this 'stuff'. I am starting to learn the bsd 'speak',,,:-) I installed a 2.0 pfSense on a second box to experiment with and setup a lagg on two d-link gigE nics. Fairly new pci ,uses the skg driver. I chose the 'load balancing' option in the lagg/pfSense web-gui.as LAN . I have these plugged into a 10/100/1000 small switch on the bench with a laptop plugged into the switch as well. Both indicator lights do light on both nics at boot/driver detection,but I can not ping the lagg(ed) nics from the laptop.? When i try and ping the laptop ip address from the pfSense console I get the following: " No buffer space found". I did do some reading and remember seeing were some of the lagg scenarios you have to have a managed switch in order for things to work right.
I chose the 'load balancing' option when i set up the lagg. I wonder if this is the type that has to have the ci$$co command line voodoo switch stuff to make it function? I didn't mess with it much as it was too nice to not get out and ride the motorcycle,,,for once in a loong time!!:-)
Any thoughts?
BTW: I m really liking pfSense functionality, so kudoos! to all that keeps their nose to the grindstone on this project!
Also- the nic intel card is listed as 'Intel dual-port server card". I think I am just going to plop one of the new in the box D-Link gigE cards and forget about the lagg thing for now anyways.Thanks,
Barry -
For lagg to work, your switch has to support it as well.
If you look at the feature list of your switch, see if it supports 802.3ad (this is the official standart defining link aggregation)
more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation
