Link Aggregation with two NICs

[jpard1234]

Hi
I have a Netgear GS108T-200AUS, which is an 8 port gigabit switch capable of link aggregation.

If i wanted to have link aggregation would it be possible to use the motherboards onboard gigabit NIC plus another PCIe based single port gigabit NIC for a total of 2 gigabit, or do i have to have a dual port NIC for this to work?

 

[kanewolf]

Link aggregation is usually a function in the driver. Since the motherboard NIC and as PCIe card would have different drivers, I don't think it would work. But I have never tried.

 

[seamus_ar]

Because only Windows Server includes a Microsoft driver for link aggregation, you will need to verify that your NIC or motherboard manufacturer have a driver that supports this. If they do not, you may have very limited options without buying new hardware.

 

[Mark RM]

Your NIC driver must support teaming with LACP and the switch must be setup to enable this feature on those ports. As mentioned only server 2012R2 and 2016 preview (and variants like CORE) does this with mixed NICS. I'd look for a dual port Intel or Broadcom server NIC that has driver support for this, they are designed for workstations and do support non server Windows. I often see them used on Amazon and Ebay, versions from HP, IBM and Dell are fine as they are all pretty generic and generally use Intel and Broadcom drivers.

 

[bill001g]

There is a very good reason it is only supported on the server versions of the windows OS. It is used when you have lots of machines accessing 1 central server. The method that is used to select which connection to use is very simplistic which greatly reduces the ability to fully utilize both connection but pure random with a large number of client it tends to work ok.

If you only have a small number of clients with few sessions you may not get much benefit. If you have say only 1 machine talking to say NAS that is also link aggregated you would still only be able to use 1g of traffic for single file transfers.

 

[Mark RM]

If you have say only 1 machine talking to say NAS that is also link aggregated you would still only be able to use 1g of traffic for single file transfers.

That's not true actually and is why you have LACP on the switch. The server drivers allow true aggregation as one of your three choices even on cheap NICS for LACP enabled switches. You are describing a load balanced situation, not an aggregated install.

Please see the Server 2012 R2 guide for more detailed information.
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/windows-server-2012-r2-nic-85aa1318

 

[bill001g]

If you have say only 1 machine talking to say NAS that is also link aggregated you would still only be able to use 1g of traffic for single file transfers.

That's not true actually and is why you have LACP on the switch. The server drivers allow true aggregation as one of your three choices even on cheap NICS for LACP enabled switches. You are describing a load balanced situation, not an aggregated install.

Please see the Server 2012 R2 guide for more detailed information.
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/windows-server-2012-r2-nic-85aa1318

You linked something that require a login. I am talking about LACP 802.3ad. It does not spread the traffic by packet it at the very best puts traffic into the link by using a hash that includes the tcp ports. This means a single session will always only use 1 link. So you can call it a HASH rather than load balancing but it does the same function.

Microsoft may have invented some new protocol that I do not know about but then it would only work with servers back to back a switch will still run standard 802.3ad.

The last time I saw a microsoft server it talked about some virtual machine teaming or use of the standard hash everyone else does. Hard to say we do not run teaming on any servers anymore for capacity we use 10g ports and only use the teaming as a method of failover.

Even so most the teaming drivers you get that are not part of microsoft server follow the hash method in 802.3ad.

 

[Mark RM]

If you have say only 1 machine talking to say NAS that is also link aggregated you would still only be able to use 1g of traffic for single file transfers.

That's not true actually and is why you have LACP on the switch. The server drivers allow true aggregation as one of your three choices even on cheap NICS for LACP enabled switches. You are describing a load balanced situation, not an aggregated install.

Please see the Server 2012 R2 guide for more detailed information.
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/windows-server-2012-r2-nic-85aa1318

You linked something that require a login. I am talking about LACP 802.3ad. It does not spread the traffic by packet it at the very best puts traffic into the link by using a hash that includes the tcp ports. This means a single session will always only use 1 link. So you can call it a HASH rather than load balancing but it does the same function.

Microsoft may have invented some new protocol that I do not know about but then it would only work with servers back to back a switch will still run standard 802.3ad.

The last time I saw a microsoft server it talked about some virtual machine teaming or use of the standard hash everyone else does. Hard to say we do not run teaming on any servers anymore for capacity we use 10g ports and only use the teaming as a method of failover.

Even so most the teaming drivers you get that are not part of microsoft server follow the hash method in 802.3ad.

802.3ad (dynamic) is now known as 802.3ax

I posted a link that anyone with a standard technet, volume licensing, or msn sub would see, it's probably only interesting to a few anyhow.

I sort of get what you're getting at, essentially there's no replacement for a fatter link (aka 10Gb). I agree with you 1 million per cent.

While a single "conversion/connection" from one TCP source to another is limited by the throughput of a member link, there's nothing stopping the software from starting multiple conversations (such as a backup, where you might be pulling off multiple VM's and sending them to backup media). And yes, some vendors have made proprietary drivers that will route over multiple interfaces - though LACP does not inherently do this as a normal part of the standard. As soon as you mentioned NAS, some are capable of routing packets over multiple interfaces via their setup (Synology comes to mind), that's why I pointed out that your statement is not exactly true.

If you copy a file from one location to another with any common OS, you won't exceed the bandwidth offered by a single link in the LAG, I agree. If you use software or hardware optimized for use in the situation, the story does change but carries an overhead penalty - yet another reason a fatter piece of copper is always better than many skinny pieces, again I agree.

Anyhow, if you want to agregate links on a workstation OS, your choices are narrowed to those vendors that support it in their own drivers. Most flavors of Linux and BSD can also do this to one degree or another as do Windows server flavors regardless of the drivers offered by the vendors by imposing their own OS based traffic manager (again at a penalty).