Create new channel bonding interface

Here you can create new channel bonding interface for network interfaces. In order to take advantage of bonding, more than one ethernet NIC needs to be plugged into the box.

In order to create a bonding interface:

select the network interfaces you want to create a new bonding interface for

select the preferred bonding type from the Create drop-down menu *

select Primary interface *

select Primary reselect policy *

set the MAC address *

select the dynamic (DHCP) or static configuration for the bond interface

when using the static configuration for a network interface, enter the IP address, netmask, broadcast and gateway. Afterwards, click the Create button and a new bonding interface will be created.

* details below

All available interfaces are characterized by the following fields:

Name

Interface name (eth0, eth1, etc.)

IP

IP address of the interface (Ip address is not shown for unavailable interfaces - used already in bond)

DHCP

Informs if DHCP is enabled on this interface

Interface details

Shows interface details (how the interface is recognized by the system)

Cable

Shows if the cable is connected to the NIC

Active

Informs if the interface can or cannot be used for bonding

Bond

Informs if the interface is already used in a bond and in which bond exactly (bond0, bond1, etc.)

Bonding types:

Balance-alb

Includes balance-tlb plus receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and does not require any special network switch support. The receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation.

Balance-tlb

Channel bonding that does not require any special switch support. The outgoing traffic is distributed according to the current load (computed relative to speed) on each slave. Incoming traffic is received by the current slave. If the receiving slave fails, another slave takes over the MAC address of the failed receiving slave. This mode provides fault tolerance and load balancing.

Active-backup

Only one slave in the bond is active. Another bonded slave interface is only used if the active bonded slave interface fails. This mode provides fault tolerance.

802.3ad

IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation creates aggregation groups that share the same speed and duplex settings. It utilizes all slaves in the active aggregator according to the 802.3ad specification. It requires a switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation.

Balance-rr

Transmissions are received and sent out sequentially on each bonded slave interface. This mode provides fault tolerance and load balancing.

Balance-xor

Transmission is based on the following equation: [(the source MAC address XOR'd with the destination MAC address) modulo (slave count)]. This selects the same slave for each destination MAC address. This mode provides fault tolerance and load balancing.

Broadcast

Transmits everything on all slave interfaces. This mode provides fault tolerance.

Primary interface:

A string (eth0, eth2, etc) specifying which slave is the primary device. The specified device will always be the active slave while it is available. Only when the primary is off-line will alternate devices be used. This is useful when one slave is preferred over another, e.g., when one slave has higher throughput than another. The primary option is only valid for the active-backup mode.

Primary reselect policy:

Specifies the reselection policy for the primary slave. This affects how the primary slave is chosen to become the active slave when failure of the active slave or recovery of the primary slave occurs. This option is designed to prevent flip-flopping between the primary slave and other slaves. Possible values are:

always

The primary slave becomes the active slave whenever it comes back up.

better

The primary slave becomes the active slave when it comes back up, if the speed and duplex of the primary slave is better than the speed and duplex of the current active slave.

failure (default)

The primary slave becomes the active slave only if the current active slave fails and the primary slave is up.

MAC:

Here you can configure the MAC address of the bond interface. You can configure a custom MAC, clone from one of the interfaces chosen for the bond or generate random MAC address.

Warning:

Using cards from different manufacturers or cards based on different chipsets in one bond team may cause low performance or unstable behavior.