Adding a NIC for Teaming

[Von Matrices]

Hi everyone,

I have a somewhat technical question which I don't think many people have experience with which to help me, but I'll ask it anyway as I have hope that someone has gone through this before. I currently am maxing out my gigabit ethernet connection (~96% utilization at 1Gbps) doing video editing with the raw video files stored on a remote server. I have been looking to teaming NICs to alleviate the problem as I have plenty of unused network cabling that can be put to work. I am relatively familiar with teaming, and I already have my server working at 2Gbps (and I have confirmed the transfer rate). The server has 2 x Marvell 88E8053 NICs and is connected to the main switch - a Dell Powerconnect 2824.

What I would like to know is how I could upgrade my client computer to support 2Gb transfer rates. The server had its two NICs built in and I needed to install a Marvell driver to enable teaming, which was relatively easy. My client computer, on the other hand, has a Gigabyte EX58-UD4P motherboard which only has 1 Realtek 8111C NIC. I see NIC add-in cards based on the Realtek 8111B chipset available for sale, and I am wondering if I could just add one of these cards to the client PC and enable teaming with the add-in card and the integrated connection. I know Gigabyte has a driver for this, and I know they say that this driver works for Realtek 8111B/8111C NICs, but I am wondering if I can mix and match the cards and still have them function or if both adapters have to be of the same model.

I would appreciate any insight into this. Thanks for the help in advance!

 

[spidey07]

Highly unlikely you can mix and match the cards. Best to just get a dual port server nic from intel and call it a day.

 

[Nothinman]

Linux has a generic bonding module that I think should work with all/most of the drivers/cards supported by Linux, however I'd still think it's a much better idea to have matching cards.

 

[netsysadmin]

Highly unlikely you can mix and match the cards. Best to just get a dual port server nic from intel and call it a day.

+1, just get a dual port Intel NIC and call it a day.

John

 

[bobdole369]

Or take the plunge and go 10gbit

 

[spidey07]

Or take the plunge and go 10gbit

Probably a better option if he's maxing out 1g. Even with teaming you don't get 2 gbs thruput as each conversation can only go over a single NIC.

 

[tonyyy]

Probably a better option if he's maxing out 1g. Even with teaming you don't get 2 gbs thruput as each conversation can only go over a single NIC.

I agree. Isn't teaming recommended when switch A goes down but switch B is still up?

Maybe you want to do load balancing?

 

[spidey07]

I agree. Isn't teaming recommended when switch A goes down but switch B is still up?

Maybe you want to do load balancing?

Teaming can be for fault tolerance (dual switches) or a form of load balancing (single switch). With load balancing a single conversation cannot occur over more than one network card so teaming makes a lot of sense for a server that has many conversations to many other hosts at once.

But not so much for a host to host file transfer that's going to be a single conversation at layer4.