As a test, I have given unraid access to 2 NICs, they are set up as bonded-rr, it works fine in regards to connectivity, however transfers seem to be limited to 33MB/s.

 

One switch is a 16 port rack-mount tplink which one of the two NICs goes straight into, however, the other NIC goes through a smaller Netgear desktop switch first, but would that make any difference? They are both gigabit switches.

 

Maybe the switch just cannot handle bonding-rr?

many people have had issues getting bonding-rr to work properly in unRaid. 

I could not get consistent transfer speed with balance-rr. From what I have read all equipment needs to be compatible. Play around with the others and see which gives you the best throughput. I ended up using balance-alb as it provided the most consistent throughput for me with bonding. I haven't done any testing to see if the bonding is providing any benefit over a single nic.

I do have a 3com 2948-SFP which supports link aggregation, would that be worth trying?

1 hour ago, burtjr said:

I could not get consistent transfer speed with balance-rr. From what I have read all equipment needs to be compatible. Play around with the others and see which gives you the best throughput. I ended up using balance-alb as it provided the most consistent throughput for me with bonding. I haven't done any testing to see if the bonding is providing any benefit over a single nic.

 

I left bonding all together and went 10gbe.... plug and play ftw.

Your switch configuration is the problem. You need one that can handle trunking/bonding which is at least a smart switch. I suggest googling balance-rr hardware requirements. Also, Windows 7 and later does not support it so you will never realize the 2Gbit with Windows unless you go Windows Server or Linux.

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