Bonding 2 NICs will enhance my speed?

[Botafoguense1965]

Ok, so I was searching for it and couldn´t get a clear answer...I have a motherboard with 2 NICs, one 2,5gbe (that I'm currently using) and one unused 1gbe. Unmanaged switch. If I also use this other NIC with one of the modes below, will I get a 3,5gbe connection? Setup is Bonded.

 

tks!

Edited September 14, 2024 by Botafoguense1965

[Veah]

I've not had any benefits from using bonding. 

I have heard that in environments with many users gains can be observed while simultaneous users access data across the same path. 

  Otherwise, it just adds another point of failure in a system that you likely want to remain as stable as possible.

[Botafoguense1965]

40 minutes ago, Veah said:

I've not had any benefits from using bonding. 

I have heard that in environments with many users gains can be observed while simultaneous users access data across the same path. 

  Otherwise, it just adds another point of failure in a system that you likely want to remain as stable as possible.

I know I wouldn’t gain much by adding an extra gig, it’s more about the theory…because soon it may be 2.5 x2 and then it works be meaningful…

[Zonediver]

1 hour ago, Botafoguense1965 said:

If I also use this other NIC with one of the modes below, will I get a 3,5gbe connection?

No

If you can bond (i am not sure), you get a 1GBit and a 2,5GBit Link - traffic will be devided by both NICs - but "not" added.

As far is i know (also not sure), bondig must be supported by both NICs too... special Server-NICs from Intel can handle this.

And last but not least: The Switch must also support bonding.

Edited September 14, 2024 by Zonediver

[Espressomatic]

Bandwidth != speed

 

Short answer to the OP: NO. 

 

You won't get any extra "speed" at all nor any extra bandwith. You will not be able to bond as your switch won't support it - unmanaged.

 

Now for some pictures (in the mind)

 

Imagine sending trucks down a single-lane road at 1 giga-kilometer per hour.

 

Now imagine sending trucks down a 2 or 3-lane road at 1 giga-kilometer per hour.

 

The speed is still 1 gkm, but you're moving 3 trucks across the same distance at the same time.

 

Now imagine that in the back of every truck are your packets.

 

Some trucks might be full, some might be empty, some might be half full, etc. Maybe only 1 is ever full and the parallel ones are always empty.

 

Same speed, more bandwidth CAPACITY, but not necessarily any additional throughput. Such a bond is to lessen the potential of a bottleneck when your server is moving a lot of data to/from multiple clients.

 

If you bond as fail-over, all of this is moot and it's just a single lane like always. And literally everything from end to end has to support the bonding - your clients don't need bonded interfaces, but need to connect to a switch that supports the bond before the server.

 

A managed switch with the correct bond support is the most important part, IMO.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2024 by Espressomatic

[Botafoguense1965]

2 hours ago, Espressomatic said:

Bandwidth != speed

 

Short answer to the OP: NO. 

 

You won't get any extra "speed" at all nor any extra bandwith. You will not be able to bond as your switch won't support it - unmanaged.

 

Now for some pictures (in the mind)

 

Imagine sending trucks down a single-lane road at 1 giga-kilometer per hour.

 

Now imagine sending trucks down a 2 or 3-lane road at 1 gaga-kilometer per hour.

 

The speed is still 1 gkm, but you're moving 3 trucks across the same distance at the same time.

 

Now imagine that in the back of every truck are your packets.

 

Some trucks might be full, some might be empty, some might be half full, etc. Maybe only 1 is ever full and the parallel ones are always empty.

 

Same speed, more bandwidth CAPACITY, but not necessarily any additional throughput. Such a bond if to lessen the potential of a bottleneck when your server is moving a lot of data to/from multiple clients.

 

If you bond as fail-over, all of this is moot and it's just a single lane like always. And literally everything from end to end has to support the bonding - your clients don't need bonded interfaces, but need to connect to a switch that supports the bond before the server.

 

A managed switch with the correct bond support is the most important part, IMO.

 

 

Thanks! Got the picture…

[MAM59]

Short Answer: NO (like everybody else here)

Longer Answer: NO NO NO NO!!!

 

Longest Answer:

First of all "active backup" just means that only ONE connection is used, if it fails somehow (dog ate cable?), it switches over to the other card (hopefully dog did not eat this cable too). They never add up!

 

Second: all other modes need support from the "other side". An unmanged switch cannot do this! Because "Bonding" (aka "port aggregation" or other names) was not standarized for a long period, vendors "invented" their own protocols. They were meant to interconnect switches of the same vendor, not to connect computers to switches. Thats why there are so many different "modes" besides "active backup". You need to find out which one is handled by your switch (as already said: NONE works with unmanaged one).

Someday, very late, they have agreed to create a "common" protocol which was then standarized as "IEEE 802.1AX-2008" (before it was named "IEEE 802.3ad" but people messed it always up with WLAN stuff) also known as "LACP". This mode assures compatibility among vendors (but of course, older hardware does not support it, so checking is alway needed).

 

Third: even IF you manage to successfully setup an LCAP or vendor specific bond, there are restrictions that need to be obeyed:

* NEVER EVER dare to mix NICs with different speeds! Its not predictable which NIC is used for a connection, so with your 2,5 + 1 G Bond you would often see "slow" transfers with the 2,5 card beeing idle. Also some calculations in the TCP Stack go crazy with this speed mixing (timeouts, round trip times and much more) AVOID AVOID AVOID!

* The bandwidth never adds up. A single connection is always handled by a single card. The next connection MAY be handled by the next card, but often there is a simple rule that decides which card to use (for instance, "the last bit of the MAC address of the connection endpoint". If even, use card 0, if odd, use card 1. And so on) This needs to be simple and fast!

 

Fourth: There is a great danger to wreck you LAN if something goes wrong. For instance, once had a bond with 2*10G links between 2 Mikrotik switches (these clever guys see the double link automatically and create a bond without intervention). After some months, something went wrong (never found out what). Now packets started to loop back and forth between these two switches and satuated the whole network. NOTHING worked anymore. It drove me crazy and took me 8 hours to find the culprit. Pulling out one Line cleared the situation within a few mins... I never tried this again.

 

Resumee: Bonds are not what you think them to be, they are usually unnecessary (and I don't know why they are still default in UNRAID) und sometimes even harmful.

STAY AWAY FROM THEM!!!

 

Edited September 15, 2024 by MAM59

[JonathanM]

9 hours ago, MAM59 said:

I don't know why they are still default in UNRAID

Because theoretically it means out of the box ANY single network connection will make the GUI available over the net, without additional configuration. Most server grade motherboards include multiple NICs, so instead of forcing people to either connect locally and configure eth0, or play "pick a port" to figure out which physical port got assigned eth0 by default, any single network connection should just work out of the box.

 

I agree it can cause issues if those assumptions (single network cable to switch) aren't true.

 

If I'm way off base feel free to correct me.

[MAM59]

1 hour ago, JonathanM said:

If I'm way off base feel free to correct me.

No No, it makes some sense. The question is just if it does not raise more problems than it solves in reality.

If I count all those "my bonding does not do what I want" postings here which all need long explanations to calm them down, it binds a lot of support time too.

The main problem are those wrong expectations of the people, they do not like to here the truth.

On the other hand, "pick a port" is not the worst idea to start with, but again, after the start people usually become greedy and ask for more, more and more. And they also usually break things then because they do not have the background to understand how things work.

 

Personally I do not think that there are many people that do the basic installation already headless.