LAG issue with Asus Mobo Dual Nics

[snowdemon14]

Motherboard is a Asus sabertooth z97 mark 1. It comes with dual NIC's, one intel 1218-v and a Realtek PCIe GBE. PROset drivers are installed and I do have the team tab at the top in the configure options. When I create a team it shows the other nic with no problems, I'm trying to do static link aggregation as im connecting to a switch that supports static. I click finish, and it tells me jumbo frams/jumbo packets are not supported on the device. I click Ok as that is not a issue as I dont use jumbo frames/packets, and the Team wizard finishes and closes, and this is where the issue is.

Looking in network connections, it shows both of my nic's in the team, and then a new Ethernet nic with my team label, but is shows disabled. I can look at its properties and it says that it is working properly and everything is just great, except I have no internet access or anything. Right clicking and clicking enable does nothing, It just says that it is enabling and then enabled, but still shows disable in network connections. any ideas?

Running windows 8.1 64 bit

 

[Tanyac]

What brand/model is your switch?

Even though a switch may support static Link aggregation you still have to configure a LAG

So - Did you add the ports on your switch that the two cables are plugged into to the LAG?

I'd recommend enabling STP and Link Trap (assuming your switch supports them).

When you run the test from the Team tab, does it pass?

FYI - You should have 3 adapters; one for each NIC and one for the team. The team will assume the MAC address of the primary NIC, or if you haven't selected one, the one with the highest priority, given I've also got an ASUS board, I'd bet it's picking the Intel I218v as the primary (You can set this in the team configuration).

 

[snowdemon14]

What brand/model is your switch?

Even though a switch may support static Link aggregation you still have to configure a LAG

So - Did you add the ports on your switch that the two cables are plugged into to the LAG?

I'd recommend enabling STP and Link Trap (assuming your switch supports them).

When you run the test from the Team tab, does it pass?

FYI - You should have 3 adapters; one for each NIC and one for the team. The team will assume the MAC address of the primary NIC, or if you haven't selected one, the one with the highest priority, given I've also got an ASUS board, I'd bet it's picking the Intel I218v as the primary (You can set this in the team configuration).

The switch is a GS108T smart Switch. LAG was configured on the switch ports, and I tried enabling link trap and STP still with no luck. I was under the impression a third Nic was not needed as it creates a virtual adapter and then can take the properties of one NIC. This seems to be more on my computer side then on the switch side

 

[bill001g]

Port aggregation is a pain to get to work even when both devices support lacp. What happens is you configure the aggregation and then only plug in 1 cable. This simulates a port failure so it still runs in aggregation mode but with only 1 port. I really hate port aggregation and am happy it is pretty much dead in commercial installs since they have gone to 10g. You might try lacp on the switch if it supports it maybe it will work better.

I hope you know the restrictions on this, it does not work well in a home environment because of the way it balances traffic. It does not load balance a single session over both ports so a single file transfer will not benefit. It also does not look at the load on the path when it selects so if there are 2 session it might put both on the same connection and leave the other idle. It is best suited for a central server with many hundreds of session connecting to it, the random of the session allocation will balance out with large numbers.

 

[Tanyac]

I have the GS108Tv2. Actually, I have 4 of them around the house.

It was a breeze to set up. Configure the team on my computer (The two "real NICs" and the third being the NIC team). Then configure it on the switch.

However, bill001g is correct. Since setting it up I have found no measurable benefit at all. I even set it up for LBFO rather than link aggregation. Still no real benefit. Sure, no lags, no spikes in ping etc. And if one NIC dies the other keeps working, but that's about all.

In some cases I've found file transfers slow to 10 MB/s when using the LAG, and if I use a single adapter, I get over 100 MB/s transfers between my PC and my server.