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Date:      Wed, 23 Jun 2004 18:36:04 -0400
From:      Sven Willenberger <sven@dmv.com>
To:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   using netgraph to connect 2 physical interfaces into one virtual interface
Message-ID:  <1088030164.29367.57.camel@lanshark.dmv.com>

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I am having a lot of trouble trying to make the following work (after
some exhaustive googling etc)

Goal: 2 interfaces (em0 and em1) to be "combined" or bonded into one
virtual interface so as to provide both increased throughput and
failover. Both physical ports connected to either the same or different
switches with a virtual gateway (the configuration for which is being
haandled separately).

What I have tried (using netgraph) and the results:

1) (from the ng_one2many manpage):
ifconfig em0 up
ifconfig em1 up
ngctl mkpeer em0: one2many upper one
ngctl connect em0: em0:upper lower many0
ngctl connect em1: em0:upper lower many1
...etc setting promisc and autosrc per the manpage

the em0 is then ifconfig'd with the ip address etc
as long as em0 link is up all seems good. When the link goes down (i.e.
disconnect the ethernet cable), then 50% packet loss occurs as it tries
to roundrobin and fail on the down side. Not a workable solution.

2) adapted from freebsd-security (derkweiler)
http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD-Security/2004-01/0084.html thread :

ifconfig em0 promisc -arp up
ifconfig em1 promisc -arp up
ngctl  mkpeer . eiface hook ether
ngctl mkpeer ngeth0: one2many upper one
ngctl connect em0: ngeth0:upper lower many0
ngctl connect em1: ngeth0:upper lower many1
ngctl msg em0: setautosrc 0
ngctl msg em1: setautosrc 0
ifconfig ngeth0 lladdr [mac addie other than 00:00:00:00:00:00]
ifconfig ngeth0 up

now if I ifconfig -arp the ngeth0 interface and add the default route,
etc, I get nowhere ... no ping responses no traffic

if I ifconfig the ngeth0 and enable arp then I can ping but get
duplicates (actually for each reply I end up with 3 (DUP!) replies.

also, the traffic throughput is miserable. Using scp from another
machine on the LAN I muster around 300KB/s to this machine, 10MB/s to
another on the same lan.

So my question is, without trying to get into ng_fec (which I understand
will also need hardware support on the other end -- blades, etc), how
can I connect the 2 physical interfaces together into a virtual
interface that proves a) respectable throughput b) "normal" traffic
patterns via icmp, etc and c) failover in the event one or the other
link goes down?



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