Network

Link aggregation

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Link aggregation, which is also known as link bonding, joins multiple network interfaces to form a single, unified interface to:

  • increase throughput, and/or
  • provide redundancy in case one of the links fails.

Create a bonding Jump to heading

  1. In the Services tab, click network setup to display the current configuration of your network interfaces.

    Interface Setup Bonding

    In the example below, three network interfaces are defined: lo, eth0, and eth1.

    service network lo
  ip address 127.0.0.

service network eth0
  auto on
  ip autoconfig
  ip address 192.168.0.200/255.255.255.0
  ip route default 192.168.0.1

service network eth1
  auto on
    service network lo
  ip address 127.0.0.

service network eth0
  auto on
  ip autoconfig
  ip address 192.168.0.200/255.255.255.0
  ip route default 192.168.0.1

service network eth1
  auto on

  2. Remove any IP configuration from any interfaces you wish to bond together.

    Info

    When a network interface is part of a bond, it cannot have an IP configuration.

    Below, we prepare to bond the eth0 and eth1 interfaces by removing the ip rules from them.

    service network lo
  ip address 127.0.0.1/9

service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on
    service network lo
  ip address 127.0.0.1/9

service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on

  3. Use a service network section to create a new interface that will serve as the bonded interface. Inside:

    • Set the bonding primary directive to the name of the first interface.
    • Set the slave directive to the names of the interfaces that will be bonded.
    • Set the ip address directive to the IP address to bind to this new interface.

    Below, we create a new interface named bond0.

    service network lo
  ip address 127.0.0.1/9

service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on

service network bond0
  bonding primary eth0
  slave eth0 eth1
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24
    service network lo
  ip address 127.0.0.1/9

service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on

service network bond0
  bonding primary eth0
  slave eth0 eth1
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24

  4. Configure the bond mode. Set the bonding mode directive to one of the supported bonding mode values:

    • To set up failover mode with one active interface at a time, create a bond0 interface in active/passive mode on top of interfaces eth0 and eth1:

      service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on

service network bond0
  bonding primary eth0
  slave eth0 eth1
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24
  bonding mode active-backup
      service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on

service network bond0
  bonding primary eth0
  slave eth0 eth1
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24
  bonding mode active-backup

    • To set up IEEE 802.3ad (LACP) Dynamic link aggregation, create a bond0 interface in active/active mode on top of interfaces eth0 and eth1:

      service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on

service network bond1
  bonding primary eth0
  slave eth0 eth1
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24
  bonding mode 802.3ad
      service network eth0
  auto on

service network eth1
  auto on

service network bond1
  bonding primary eth0
  slave eth0 eth1
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24
  bonding mode 802.3ad

  5. Do one of the following:

    • If you updated an existing bond interface, reload the network interface.
    • If you created a new bond interface, restart the network interface.

  6. In the Setup tab, click Save under Local Configuration to persist your changes after a reboot.

Available settings Jump to heading

The following settings are available to configure the bonding interface:

Parameter Description
slave <iface> <iface>... interfaces to add in the bond
bonding primary <iface> primary slave for current bond
bonding mode <mode> bonding mode (default: 1 or active-backup)
bonding updelay <ms> bonding delay check in ms (default: 1000)
bonding downdelay <ms> bonding delay check in ms (default: 1000)

Available modes Jump to heading

The following table shows which bonding modes are supported.

Mode number Mode code Description
O balance-rr Select output interfaces in a round-robin fashion.
1 active-backup Failover mode with one active interface at a time.
2 balance-xor Transmit based on MAC address. The default policy is a source+destination MAC address algorithm. You can select alternate transmit policies through the xmit-hash-policy directive.
3 broadcast Not supported.
4 802.3ad You can bundle several physical ports to form a single logical channel through the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), which is part of the IEEE specification 802.3ad.
Prerequisites:
- Ethtool support in drivers to retrieve the speed and duplex of each slave.
- A switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation.
5 balance-tlb Transmit load balancing. The outgoing interface is selected based on interfaces load.
Prerequisites:
- Ethtool support in drivers to retrieve the speed and duplex of each slave.
6 balance-alb Adaptive load balancing; balance-tlb mode with a reception load balancing mode made using the ARP protocol.

Troubleshooting Jump to heading

When the bonding configuration is correctly set up:

  • The bondX interface has at least the MASTER and MULTICAST labels.
  • The ethX interfaces have at least the SLAVE and MULTICAST labels.
  • Both bondX and associated ethX are UP.
  • The bondX and ethX interfaces have the same MAC address.

Example:

bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:B9:13:52:2D
  inet addr:10.0.32.10 Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.0.0
  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:B9:13:52:2D
  UP BROADCAST NOARP SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
  Interrupt:11 Base address:0x2000
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:B9:13:52:2D
  UP BROADCAST NOARP SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
  Interrupt:12 Base address:0x4000
bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:B9:13:52:2D
  inet addr:10.0.32.10 Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.0.0
  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:B9:13:52:2D
  UP BROADCAST NOARP SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
  Interrupt:11 Base address:0x2000
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:B9:13:52:2D
  UP BROADCAST NOARP SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
  Interrupt:12 Base address:0x4000

Advanced parameter: xmit-hash-policy Jump to heading

When used in active/active mode (that is, bonding mode is set to 802.3ad), the choice of which network interface to use for outbound traffic is made using the destination MAC address.

In some cases, for example, when the traffic to your default gateway is higher than a single network interface capacity, you can change the xmit-hash-policy by setting the /sys parameter.

  • Add a xmit-hash-policy directive using the syntax below:

    bonding xmit_hash_policy <policyid>
    bonding xmit_hash_policy <policyid>

The <policyid> argument can have two values and describes the information used to compute the hash algorithm:

Value Description
0 or layer2 Use the destination MAC address
1 or layer3+4 When available, use source and destination IPs and ports

Below, we change xmit_hash_policy to 1 for bonding1:

service network bond1
  slave eth0 eth1
  bonding primary eth0
  bonding mode 802.3ad
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24
  bonding xmit_hash_policy 1
service network bond1
  slave eth0 eth1
  bonding primary eth0
  bonding mode 802.3ad
  ip address 172.16.24.237/24
  bonding xmit_hash_policy 1

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