Linux Ethernet Bonding Configuration
Posted by Admin on September 24th, 2006
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Ethernet Bonding Types
The linux kernel bonding module supports a number of bonding types.
Round Robin
Packets are transmitted in a round robin fashion over the available slave interfaces. Provides both load balancing and fault tolerance
Active Backup
One slave interface is active at any time. If one interface fails, another interface takes over the MAC address and becomes the active interface. Provides fault tolerance only. Doesn’t require special switch support
Balance XOR
Tranmissions are balanced across the slave interfaces based on ((source MAC) XOR (dest MAC)) modula slave count. The same slave is selected for each destination MAC. Provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
Broadcast
Transmits everything on all slave interfaces. Provides fault tolerance.
802.3ad
This is classic IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation. This requires 802.3ad support in the switch and driver support for retrieving the speed and duplex of each slave.
Balance TLB
Adaptive Transmit Load Balancing. Incoming traffic is received on the active slave only, outgoing traffic is distributed according to the current load on each slave. Doesn’t require special switch support
Balance ALB
Adaptive Load Balancing – provides both transmit load balancing (TLB) and receive load balancing for IPv4 via ARP negotiation. Doesn’t require special switch support, but does require the ability to change the MAC address of a device while it is open
Setup Bonding Ethernet on Debian and ubuntu with a 2.4 kernel
To use Bonding Ethernet for High-Availability (fail-over) on Debian (Woody, Sarge,etch or Sid with a 2.4.x kernel) and ubuntu you need to:
install package ifenslave-2.4.To install this package follow this command
#apt-get install ifenslave-2.4
make sure the real NICs kernel modules are loaded automatically
edit /etc/network/interfaces to look like this:
iface bond0 inet static
address 10.31.1.5
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 10.31.1.0
gateway 10.31.1.254
up /sbin/ifenslave bond0 eth0
up /sbin/ifenslave bond0 eth1
comment or borrow the lines referring to your real NICs in the same file
add the following lines to your /etc/modutils/arch/i386:
alias bond0 bonding
options bonding mode=1 miimon=100 downdelay=200 updelay=200
Now run the following command for update
#update-modules
Setup Bonding Ethernet on Debian and ubuntu with a 2.6 kernel
To use Bonding Ethernet for High-Availability (fail-over) on Debian (Woody, Sarge,etch or Sid with a 2.4.x kernel) and ubuntu you need to:
install package ifenslave-2.6.To install this package follow this command
#apt-get install ifenslave-2.6
make sure the real NICs kernel modules are loaded automatically
edit /etc/network/interfaces to look like this:
iface bond0 inet static
address 10.31.1.5
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 10.31.1.0
gateway 10.31.1.254
up /sbin/ifenslave bond0 eth0
up /sbin/ifenslave bond0 eth1
comment or borrow the lines referring to your real NICs in the same file
add the following lines to your /etc/modprobe.d/arch/i386:
alias bond0 bonding
options bonding mode=1 miimon=100 downdelay=200 updelay=200
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:42 pm
This howto is incomplete. What if I have 4 NICs and I want to create two separate bonding devices with two slaves each ?
As far as I have tried, I manage to get the bond0 interface up but I can not get bond1 up using /etc/network/interfaces.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 am
And I have need for an active failover bond consisting of two load balanced bonds. I fear bonding only supports enslaving of “real” eth interfaces, though. Has anobody tried that?
August 5th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Can you provide an example of /etc/network/interfaces with two IP addresses on the same bonding interface ?
Thanks
June 16th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
The default max bonding device is 1. See . Try setting it to 2 or more.