Network bonding.

[Esse]

Hi all!

I have been searching the forum regarding the bonding feature in version 6, but I did not find a solution to my problem.

 

I did setup a balance-rr to double the LAN speed on the unRAID box, and I did setup the HP V1910-24G Switch (JE006A) in link aggregation mode.

 

A couple of questions:

 

1/ My mobo (ASRock E3C226D2I mITX) have 2 x Intel i210, that support Dual GLAN with teaming function, do I need to enable this or does the "bonding" feature in unRAID do the same thing?

 

2/ Is there a way to confirm that the balance-rr performs like it should?

 

3/ After enabling the bonding feature and a reboot I can not connect to the webgui anymore, any ideas?

 

I see in the forum that some of this and other things regarding bonding have been asked before, is there some kind of write up or manualish info regarding this?

 

Cheers

 

Esse

[BillyJ]

I don't know much about bonding and the same as you experienced times when I would not be able to connect to the webgui. This was usually down to the link aggregation on my switch not being done right most of the time.

 

Right now I've settled for setting unRAID to 802.3ad(4). It can sustain a 113mb/s copy to a win 8 pc and 2 HD stream to plex on xbone. Until I bond the NIC's on the win8 PC I don't really know a way of testing the throughput.

 

Yes i'd be very interested on some networking guru explaining a few more things about bonding or at least pointing to some generic linux bonding information on the net that would also apply to unRAID.

 

 

 

[dgaschk]

Bonding will only improve speed if more than one user is accessing the server. Each individual TCP session is restricted to a single Ethernet link.

[Esse]

Bonding will only improve speed if more than one user is accessing the server. Each individual TCP session is restricted to a single Ethernet link.

 

Exactly what I am looking for.

 

/E

[roberth58]

Bonding will only improve speed if more than one user is accessing the server. Each individual TCP session is restricted to a single Ethernet link.

 

I was under the impression that this was true for LACP, but that balance-rr would allow packets across multiple links from a single TCP session. So if a client and a server both have a balance-rr connection you should be ale to transfer at greater than gigabit speed, depending on number of NIC's bonded and read/write speed of drives.

[dgaschk]

Bonding will only improve speed if more than one user is accessing the server. Each individual TCP session is restricted to a single Ethernet link.

 

I was under the impression that this was true for LACP, but that balance-rr would allow packets across multiple links from a single TCP session. So if a client and a server both have a balance-rr connection you should be ale to transfer at greater than gigabit speed, depending on number of NIC's bonded and read/write speed of drives.

 

balance-rr is not typically used for TCP because out of order delivery causes retransmits.

[sweigh]

I'm also looking for clarification on bonding setup, specifically balance-rr(0). I've got Link aggregation setup/LACP enabled on my switch (Cisco SG200-50), however I'm getting about 75% packetloss. I've got 4 ports bonded, but 3 are always in standby, with 1 active. I assume this is normal as it's a round-robin active/standby setup, but it's so slow that it's virtually useless. If someone who has successfully setup balance-rr could post their network.cfg or go file, I would appreciate it.

 

 

[dgaschk]

Out of order delivery appears as TCP packet loss. This is why balance-rr is not used for TCP.

[bubbaQ]

Windows can't do balance-rr.  If you want to improve single-link speed, get a 10GBit card.

 

 

[sweigh]

Ah ok, that makes sense then. I guess I'll stick with 802.3ad then. Thanks!

[Esse]

In short: If I have a "Bonding" feature on my hardware, (Switch and Mobo) do I need to activate this in unraid then?

 

/E