Is Teaming with one Network Card possible?

Question

If my Network Card has 4 ports can I do teaming (LBFO) ?

Or I need to have two Network Cards ?

Ummm, more data, please? OS would definitely be a good start! — MadHatter, Jan 23 '13 at 08:58

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 24 '13 at 11:32

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Generally said - yes. Teaming is done for many reasons, among them bandwidth and hardware ressoruce splitting (every nic having a limited number of hardware queues).

No software I know of is "card based". They may have limits, but generally logically you do not team cards, but ports. Ethernet interfaces, to be more exact.

Using RouterOS, using Windows (2012 integrated teaming, old intel based driver teaming) and while they may have had limits what you can do cross NIC, using the same type of NIC / similar NICs never was an issue. No experience with Linux in general (but RouterOs is linux based).

edited Jan 24 '13 at 11:32

the-wabbit

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answered Jan 23 '13 at 09:04

TomTom

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Linux works mostly driver-agnostic - either via the ["bonding" driver](http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt) (Kernels older than 3.3) or the ["teaming" driver](https://fedorahosted.org/libteam/) (Kernels >= 3.3) and offers a variety of modes to team/bond your interfaces. – the-wabbit Jan 24 '13 at 11:05
@syneticon-dj I know, and Microsoft finally did the same in Server 2012... put Teaming into the operating system. I love it - before that it was a damn pain and specific to drivers. – TomTom Jan 24 '13 at 11:27

Truebsalgeblaese · Answer 2 · 2013-01-24T10:31:35.543

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Possible: Most of the times, as bonding is done on interface-level but not on cards.

The question is more what you wish to gain:

more speed - yes, but be aware that 4x 1G != 4G, as individual transfers can only use one physical interface in nearly all configurations
more reliability - partly, but only on cable-level (or switch-modules, if you split it up) - the failing card will bring down all interfaces most of the time...

tsg

edited Jan 24 '13 at 10:31

answered Jan 23 '13 at 09:03

Truebsalgeblaese

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That said, cards do not fail so easily - and often when they do the take other cards with them (seen that in a power surge, took all network cards in a rack down). eaming same card still helps with for example cable issues etc. – TomTom Jan 23 '13 at 09:04

Is Teaming with one Network Card possible?

2 Answers2