Multipathing in Windows 10

[Andrewst1021]

How would one setup up multipathing in Windows 10, is there any special pieces of hardware or software involved?

 

[Alabalcho]

What do you define as "Multi-pathing"?
If this is to use different (static) router, then "route" command is your friend.
If this for redundancy, you need pair of supported network cards (or multi-port NIC).

 

[Andrewst1021]

This is to increase total throughput, I want several computers with 2 gbps connections, my raid 6 array could handle it. I don't want to spend $1500 for 10 gbps when I could only use a quarter of the speed.

 

[jsmithepa]

LINK AGGREGATION.

You must have 2+ NICs on your PC, and a switch that supportS it, then finally if you are talking to a server, then of course that server too needs 2+ NICs.

 

[Andrewst1021]

Thats bandwidth, I've looked at etherchannel, port bonding, LACP, LAG, and this. I've read several articles with mixed results. I was hoping multipathing might be a solution to double my network's speed.

 

[bill001g]

So how much effort and learning do you really want to do. The only other way to even think to do this other than etherchannel is to use a routing protocol that support multiple equal cost paths. The only common one used is OSPF. You can make OSPF load balance by packet. It has its risks though related to out of order packets. Problem is it was never really designed to be done on end device mostly between routers. You can run OSPF on a end machine but I doubt your NAS will support it...even if it does multiple equal path load balancing is a very advanced feature.

Because of all the issues involved with any form of bonding almost every enterprise install has been moving to 10g ports to solve this issue rather than mess with bonding any more.

 

[Andrewst1021]

I will continue to learn till I take my last breath, this is what I love about computing. I will be building my own NAS with a zeon, ecc memory, an I350 T4 NIC, all on Freenas. I think that TCP will request the data to be resent if it is out of order, right?

 

[bill001g]

That is the issue and if it gets really out of order the session resets. You end up eating part of your bandwidth with unnecessary packet retransmissions. Generally if you do this in lan the packet arrive so quickly that the end device buffer will tolerate it but it still something you need to be concerned with at high transfer rates.

This takes a completely non standard lan design. This was mainly used for WAN. You will need to run all your connections as layer 3 connections which generally means in a design like yours you will run multiple point to point networks between a central switch and the end devices. If you can get the end devices to work properly it should work ok with a quality layer 3 switch in the middle. The largest issue is end devices are not routers and things like OSPF are secondary considerations to the OS creators so they may not support things like the ability to use a loopback ip. The use a of loopback or single IP for the end device advertised as being available over both point to point links is critical to making this work.

 

[Andrewst1021]

So as long as the OS supports OSPF and I have a layer 3 switch this could give me an increase of throughput, at the cost of extra transmissions?

 

[bill001g]

It should but this is not a common solution in a lan.....almost everyone has just started using 10g ports.

 

[Andrewst1021]

Could I daisy chain the computers I need to the NAS with 10gigabit cards?

 

[bill001g]

You would just put in a simple 10g switch. They are now selling unmanged ones for a tiny fraction of what they cost a few years back. Still kinda expensive but at least is a valid option for a home user.

 

[Andrewst1021]

lowest I found was 760 dollars, given my raid 6 would only output 250 MB/s its not worth that and the cards.