linux configure 2 NICs to team mode / redundancy mode / switch mode

Question

I would like to implement 3 modes of NIC operation to my users, so that they can choose how to use 2 NICs on their machines.

These 3 modes are:

1. Team mode: (aka) link aggregation, use 2 NICs together in order to get higher total bandwidth.
2. Redundancy Mode: only 1 NIC is active, it will switch automatically if the link fails
3. Switch Mode: the 2 NICs is like a switch, one port for LAN, another port is able to connect other devices.

How do i achieve these 3 modes? Thanks for your help, even partial answers are greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You Google "Channel Bonding ubuntu" in Google. First link I came up with was https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBonding.

In a nut shell -

• sudo apt-get install ifenslave
• Check "bonding" module is loaded (ie it exists in /proc/modules, if not, add to /etc/modules and load manually/reboot)
• Modify network Interfaces to create and use a bond0 device rather then ethernet device (and enslave the ethernets into the bond)

Example -

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
bond-master bond0

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet manual
bond-master bond0

auto bond0
bond-mode XXXX
bond-miimon 100
bond-lacp-rate 1
bond-slaves none
iface bond0 inet ....
[definition as per eth0 was initially]

Restart networking bond-mode XXXX refers to the mode you want to use for bonding. Briefly.

0 = balance-rr (round robin), 1 = active-backup 2 = balance-xor 3 = broadcast 4 = 802.3ad 5 = balance-tlb 6 = balance-alb

Mode 0 and 1 are the easiest to use and don't require any special hardware or fiddle with the routing.