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I recently upgraded our file server with two NIC's and configured NIC teaming. I tested the file transfer and noticed that the file transfer only happen one at a time. Example: I have a 1GB file that I started downloading on two different machines at the same time. The first one started downloading and the second on paused until the first one was complete.

I thought the purpose of the NIC teaming was to have more bandwidth through load balancing? Did I miss something during configuration? I enabled multiply transfers through powershell but still one transfer at a time.

Brandon Wilson
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1 Answers1

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This depends on the type of NIC teaming that you're doing. Did you configure this by Server 2012 R2's built in NIC teaming facilities, or by using vendor-specific driver teaming?

From here:

LACP will not split packets across multiple interfaces for a single stream/thread. For example a single TCP stream will always send/receive packets on the same NIC.

The same also applies to Etherchannel. Did you also configure your switches if you're using LACP?

If you've just configured them in active/standby then only one NIC will ever actually be used.

But the activity that you've described is very odd. The second one should not pause. Typically both transfers will take place, with the bandwidth split roughly 50/50 between the two. What protocol did you use to do the test?

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Mark Henderson
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