2 ethernet cards

[howdyboby]

I am running a fileserver at home. It is only on the internal network, and is highly used. through out most of the day the networkcards bandwith is 100% used. It has 2 network cards in it, i can use both with diffrent ip's just fine, but it is a hassle to mount and unmount diffrent ip's. I was wondering if there was a way to get the network cards to do some kind of load balancing. where they both have the same IP, or host name, and split the work load, does anyone know if there is a way to do this, if not is it even possable?

thanks
howdyboby

[threadhead]

i dont think you can use the same ip for 2 nics.
plus i dont think you can double up the network speed in "joining" these two nics.

my two cents ;)

[bwkaz]

Yeah, it's possible. Check out CONFIG_BONDING in the kernel configuration. Or run through menuconfig and look at "Network device support" -- "Bonding driver support".

The module is named bonding.o, so a modprobe bonding may enable something useful.

[threadhead]

Originally posted by bwkaz
Yeah, it's possible. Check out CONFIG_BONDING in the kernel configuration. Or run through menuconfig and look at "Network device support" -- "Bonding driver support".

The module is named bonding.o, so a modprobe bonding may enable something useful.

wow linux rocks!

[bwkaz]

Well, what I should have said before is that the other end (whatever both cards are plugged into) has to support it too. If it's another computer running the bonding driver, it'll work, and there are also some (probably proprietary) Cisco setups that it can talk to. But the Cisco (and whoever else) versions are very likely expensive.

In other words, I don't think you can do it if you just have both cards plugged into a hub. :(

But it's there. :D

Actually, another way to do it is to set up BIND on some computer, as an authoritative DNS server for the (small, home, nonexistant outside the network) domain. Then set up one name pointing at both IP's (in the forward zone), and BIND will load-balance across both IPs. It alternates which IP it returns when there are more than one available, so you can use the same name when you mount, and it'll be the opposite card every time.

[howdyboby]

awsome, thanks for the help, i will look into both bonding and useing BIND with 2 diffrent IP's