So right now I have only one NIC and do not have free pci ports to get a 10g, So I have heard of people being able to use 2 1G nics and combine them together to get faster speeds. Is this possible with unRaid? does my router or switch need to support something special? Just looking to get better speeds. (Was going to use a usb3 to nic adapter)

 

Or other options?

Edited October 18, 20196 yr by almulder

Unraid support various bonding modes with various benefits.

 

The default bonding mode is mode 1 (active backup), which gives link redundancy (in case a cable gets unplugged, for example) but no throughput improvement.

 

True link aggregation (mode 4 - IEEE 802.3ad) allows two 1 Gb/s ports to be made to work like a virtual single 2 Gb/s port with the advantage that if one link fails the other can continue at 1 Gb/s. If your client PCs also have a pair of 1 Gb/s ports, bonded the same way, then you can achieve a maximum theoretical throughput of 2 Gb/s. The disadvantage is that you need a managed switch that supports link aggregation.

 

Mode 6 (balance-alb) offers adaptive load balancing and is the one I use. The advantage is that you can use inexpensive unmanaged switches, while still getting link redundancy, and improved throughput if more than one client is used. By bonding two 1 Gb/s ports multiple clients can share 2 Gb/s of throughput, which is an improvement over the 1 Gb/s shared between them if you don't use bonding, but any given client can only make use of one of the links at any one time.

 

If you go to Settings -> Network Settings and turn on help you'll see all available options and a description of each in the Unraid WebGUI.