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Based on kernel version 3.9. Page generated on 2013-05-02 23:10 EST.

1	
2			Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO
3	
4			Latest update: 27 April 2011
5	
6	Initial release : Thomas Davis <tadavis at lbl.gov>
7	Corrections, HA extensions : 2000/10/03-15 :
8	  - Willy Tarreau <willy at meta-x.org>
9	  - Constantine Gavrilov <const-g at xpert.com>
10	  - Chad N. Tindel <ctindel at ieee dot org>
11	  - Janice Girouard <girouard at us dot ibm dot com>
12	  - Jay Vosburgh <fubar at us dot ibm dot com>
13	
14	Reorganized and updated Feb 2005 by Jay Vosburgh
15	Added Sysfs information: 2006/04/24
16	  - Mitch Williams <mitch.a.williams at intel.com>
17	
18	Introduction
19	============
20	
21		The Linux bonding driver provides a method for aggregating
22	multiple network interfaces into a single logical "bonded" interface.
23	The behavior of the bonded interfaces depends upon the mode; generally
24	speaking, modes provide either hot standby or load balancing services.
25	Additionally, link integrity monitoring may be performed.
26		
27		The bonding driver originally came from Donald Becker's
28	beowulf patches for kernel 2.0. It has changed quite a bit since, and
29	the original tools from extreme-linux and beowulf sites will not work
30	with this version of the driver.
31	
32		For new versions of the driver, updated userspace tools, and
33	who to ask for help, please follow the links at the end of this file.
34	
35	Table of Contents
36	=================
37	
38	1. Bonding Driver Installation
39	
40	2. Bonding Driver Options
41	
42	3. Configuring Bonding Devices
43	3.1	Configuration with Sysconfig Support
44	3.1.1		Using DHCP with Sysconfig
45	3.1.2		Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig
46	3.2	Configuration with Initscripts Support
47	3.2.1		Using DHCP with Initscripts
48	3.2.2		Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts
49	3.3	Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave
50	3.3.1		Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually
51	3.4	Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs
52	3.5	Configuration with Interfaces Support
53	3.6	Overriding Configuration for Special Cases
54	
55	4. Querying Bonding Configuration
56	4.1	Bonding Configuration
57	4.2	Network Configuration
58	
59	5. Switch Configuration
60	
61	6. 802.1q VLAN Support
62	
63	7. Link Monitoring
64	7.1	ARP Monitor Operation
65	7.2	Configuring Multiple ARP Targets
66	7.3	MII Monitor Operation
67	
68	8. Potential Trouble Sources
69	8.1	Adventures in Routing
70	8.2	Ethernet Device Renaming
71	8.3	Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon
72	
73	9. SNMP agents
74	
75	10. Promiscuous mode
76	
77	11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability
78	11.1	High Availability in a Single Switch Topology
79	11.2	High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology
80	11.2.1		HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
81	11.2.2		HA Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
82	
83	12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput
84	12.1	Maximum Throughput in a Single Switch Topology
85	12.1.1		MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology
86	12.1.2		MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology
87	12.2	Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology
88	12.2.1		MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
89	12.2.2		MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
90	
91	13. Switch Behavior Issues
92	13.1	Link Establishment and Failover Delays
93	13.2	Duplicated Incoming Packets
94	
95	14. Hardware Specific Considerations
96	14.1	IBM BladeCenter
97	
98	15. Frequently Asked Questions
99	
100	16. Resources and Links
101	
102	
103	1. Bonding Driver Installation
104	==============================
105	
106		Most popular distro kernels ship with the bonding driver
107	already available as a module and the ifenslave user level control
108	program installed and ready for use. If your distro does not, or you
109	have need to compile bonding from source (e.g., configuring and
110	installing a mainline kernel from kernel.org), you'll need to perform
111	the following steps:
112	
113	1.1 Configure and build the kernel with bonding
114	-----------------------------------------------
115	
116		The current version of the bonding driver is available in the
117	drivers/net/bonding subdirectory of the most recent kernel source
118	(which is available on http://kernel.org).  Most users "rolling their
119	own" will want to use the most recent kernel from kernel.org.
120	
121		Configure kernel with "make menuconfig" (or "make xconfig" or
122	"make config"), then select "Bonding driver support" in the "Network
123	device support" section.  It is recommended that you configure the
124	driver as module since it is currently the only way to pass parameters
125	to the driver or configure more than one bonding device.
126	
127		Build and install the new kernel and modules, then continue
128	below to install ifenslave.
129	
130	1.2 Install ifenslave Control Utility
131	-------------------------------------
132	
133		The ifenslave user level control program is included in the
134	kernel source tree, in the file Documentation/networking/ifenslave.c.
135	It is generally recommended that you use the ifenslave that
136	corresponds to the kernel that you are using (either from the same
137	source tree or supplied with the distro), however, ifenslave
138	executables from older kernels should function (but features newer
139	than the ifenslave release are not supported).  Running an ifenslave
140	that is newer than the kernel is not supported, and may or may not
141	work.
142	
143		To install ifenslave, do the following:
144	
145	# gcc -Wall -O -I/usr/src/linux/include ifenslave.c -o ifenslave
146	# cp ifenslave /sbin/ifenslave
147	
148		If your kernel source is not in "/usr/src/linux," then replace
149	"/usr/src/linux/include" in the above with the location of your kernel
150	source include directory.
151	
152		You may wish to back up any existing /sbin/ifenslave, or, for
153	testing or informal use, tag the ifenslave to the kernel version
154	(e.g., name the ifenslave executable /sbin/ifenslave-2.6.10).
155	
156	IMPORTANT NOTE:
157	
158		If you omit the "-I" or specify an incorrect directory, you
159	may end up with an ifenslave that is incompatible with the kernel
160	you're trying to build it for.  Some distros (e.g., Red Hat from 7.1
161	onwards) do not have /usr/include/linux symbolically linked to the
162	default kernel source include directory.
163	
164	SECOND IMPORTANT NOTE:
165		If you plan to configure bonding using sysfs or using the
166	/etc/network/interfaces file, you do not need to use ifenslave.
167	
168	2. Bonding Driver Options
169	=========================
170	
171		Options for the bonding driver are supplied as parameters to the
172	bonding module at load time, or are specified via sysfs.
173	
174		Module options may be given as command line arguments to the
175	insmod or modprobe command, but are usually specified in either the
176	/etc/modrobe.d/*.conf configuration files, or in a distro-specific
177	configuration file (some of which are detailed in the next section).
178	
179		Details on bonding support for sysfs is provided in the
180	"Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs" section, below.
181	
182		The available bonding driver parameters are listed below. If a
183	parameter is not specified the default value is used.  When initially
184	configuring a bond, it is recommended "tail -f /var/log/messages" be
185	run in a separate window to watch for bonding driver error messages.
186	
187		It is critical that either the miimon or arp_interval and
188	arp_ip_target parameters be specified, otherwise serious network
189	degradation will occur during link failures.  Very few devices do not
190	support at least miimon, so there is really no reason not to use it.
191	
192		Options with textual values will accept either the text name
193	or, for backwards compatibility, the option value.  E.g.,
194	"mode=802.3ad" and "mode=4" set the same mode.
195	
196		The parameters are as follows:
197	
198	active_slave
199	
200		Specifies the new active slave for modes that support it
201		(active-backup, balance-alb and balance-tlb).  Possible values
202		are the name of any currently enslaved interface, or an empty
203		string.  If a name is given, the slave and its link must be up in order
204		to be selected as the new active slave.  If an empty string is
205		specified, the current active slave is cleared, and a new active
206		slave is selected automatically.
207	
208		Note that this is only available through the sysfs interface. No module
209		parameter by this name exists.
210	
211		The normal value of this option is the name of the currently
212		active slave, or the empty string if there is no active slave or
213		the current mode does not use an active slave.
214	
215	ad_select
216	
217		Specifies the 802.3ad aggregation selection logic to use.  The
218		possible values and their effects are:
219	
220		stable or 0
221	
222			The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate
223			bandwidth.
224	
225			Reselection of the active aggregator occurs only when all
226			slaves of the active aggregator are down or the active
227			aggregator has no slaves.
228	
229			This is the default value.
230	
231		bandwidth or 1
232	
233			The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate
234			bandwidth.  Reselection occurs if:
235	
236			- A slave is added to or removed from the bond
237	
238			- Any slave's link state changes
239	
240			- Any slave's 802.3ad association state changes
241	
242			- The bond's administrative state changes to up
243	
244		count or 2
245	
246			The active aggregator is chosen by the largest number of
247			ports (slaves).  Reselection occurs as described under the
248			"bandwidth" setting, above.
249	
250		The bandwidth and count selection policies permit failover of
251		802.3ad aggregations when partial failure of the active aggregator
252		occurs.  This keeps the aggregator with the highest availability
253		(either in bandwidth or in number of ports) active at all times.
254	
255		This option was added in bonding version 3.4.0.
256	
257	all_slaves_active
258	
259		Specifies that duplicate frames (received on inactive ports) should be
260		dropped (0) or delivered (1).
261	
262		Normally, bonding will drop duplicate frames (received on inactive
263		ports), which is desirable for most users. But there are some times
264		it is nice to allow duplicate frames to be delivered.
265	
266		The default value is 0 (drop duplicate frames received on inactive
267		ports).
268	
269	arp_interval
270	
271		Specifies the ARP link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.
272	
273		The ARP monitor works by periodically checking the slave
274		devices to determine whether they have sent or received
275		traffic recently (the precise criteria depends upon the
276		bonding mode, and the state of the slave).  Regular traffic is
277		generated via ARP probes issued for the addresses specified by
278		the arp_ip_target option.
279	
280		This behavior can be modified by the arp_validate option,
281		below.
282	
283		If ARP monitoring is used in an etherchannel compatible mode
284		(modes 0 and 2), the switch should be configured in a mode
285		that evenly distributes packets across all links. If the
286		switch is configured to distribute the packets in an XOR
287		fashion, all replies from the ARP targets will be received on
288		the same link which could cause the other team members to
289		fail.  ARP monitoring should not be used in conjunction with
290		miimon.  A value of 0 disables ARP monitoring.  The default
291		value is 0.
292	
293	arp_ip_target
294	
295		Specifies the IP addresses to use as ARP monitoring peers when
296		arp_interval is > 0.  These are the targets of the ARP request
297		sent to determine the health of the link to the targets.
298		Specify these values in ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd format.  Multiple IP
299		addresses must be separated by a comma.  At least one IP
300		address must be given for ARP monitoring to function.  The
301		maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16.  The
302		default value is no IP addresses.
303	
304	arp_validate
305	
306		Specifies whether or not ARP probes and replies should be
307		validated in the active-backup mode.  This causes the ARP
308		monitor to examine the incoming ARP requests and replies, and
309		only consider a slave to be up if it is receiving the
310		appropriate ARP traffic.
311	
312		Possible values are:
313	
314		none or 0
315	
316			No validation is performed.  This is the default.
317	
318		active or 1
319	
320			Validation is performed only for the active slave.
321	
322		backup or 2
323	
324			Validation is performed only for backup slaves.
325	
326		all or 3
327	
328			Validation is performed for all slaves.
329	
330		For the active slave, the validation checks ARP replies to
331		confirm that they were generated by an arp_ip_target.  Since
332		backup slaves do not typically receive these replies, the
333		validation performed for backup slaves is on the ARP request
334		sent out via the active slave.  It is possible that some
335		switch or network configurations may result in situations
336		wherein the backup slaves do not receive the ARP requests; in
337		such a situation, validation of backup slaves must be
338		disabled.
339	
340		This option is useful in network configurations in which
341		multiple bonding hosts are concurrently issuing ARPs to one or
342		more targets beyond a common switch.  Should the link between
343		the switch and target fail (but not the switch itself), the
344		probe traffic generated by the multiple bonding instances will
345		fool the standard ARP monitor into considering the links as
346		still up.  Use of the arp_validate option can resolve this, as
347		the ARP monitor will only consider ARP requests and replies
348		associated with its own instance of bonding.
349	
350		This option was added in bonding version 3.1.0.
351	
352	downdelay
353	
354		Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before disabling
355		a slave after a link failure has been detected.  This option
356		is only valid for the miimon link monitor.  The downdelay
357		value should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it
358		will be rounded down to the nearest multiple.  The default
359		value is 0.
360	
361	fail_over_mac
362	
363		Specifies whether active-backup mode should set all slaves to
364		the same MAC address at enslavement (the traditional
365		behavior), or, when enabled, perform special handling of the
366		bond's MAC address in accordance with the selected policy.
367	
368		Possible values are:
369	
370		none or 0
371	
372			This setting disables fail_over_mac, and causes
373			bonding to set all slaves of an active-backup bond to
374			the same MAC address at enslavement time.  This is the
375			default.
376	
377		active or 1
378	
379			The "active" fail_over_mac policy indicates that the
380			MAC address of the bond should always be the MAC
381			address of the currently active slave.  The MAC
382			address of the slaves is not changed; instead, the MAC
383			address of the bond changes during a failover.
384	
385			This policy is useful for devices that cannot ever
386			alter their MAC address, or for devices that refuse
387			incoming broadcasts with their own source MAC (which
388			interferes with the ARP monitor).
389	
390			The down side of this policy is that every device on
391			the network must be updated via gratuitous ARP,
392			vs. just updating a switch or set of switches (which
393			often takes place for any traffic, not just ARP
394			traffic, if the switch snoops incoming traffic to
395			update its tables) for the traditional method.  If the
396			gratuitous ARP is lost, communication may be
397			disrupted.
398	
399			When this policy is used in conjunction with the mii
400			monitor, devices which assert link up prior to being
401			able to actually transmit and receive are particularly
402			susceptible to loss of the gratuitous ARP, and an
403			appropriate updelay setting may be required.
404	
405		follow or 2
406	
407			The "follow" fail_over_mac policy causes the MAC
408			address of the bond to be selected normally (normally
409			the MAC address of the first slave added to the bond).
410			However, the second and subsequent slaves are not set
411			to this MAC address while they are in a backup role; a
412			slave is programmed with the bond's MAC address at
413			failover time (and the formerly active slave receives
414			the newly active slave's MAC address).
415	
416			This policy is useful for multiport devices that
417			either become confused or incur a performance penalty
418			when multiple ports are programmed with the same MAC
419			address.
420	
421	
422		The default policy is none, unless the first slave cannot
423		change its MAC address, in which case the active policy is
424		selected by default.
425	
426		This option may be modified via sysfs only when no slaves are
427		present in the bond.
428	
429		This option was added in bonding version 3.2.0.  The "follow"
430		policy was added in bonding version 3.3.0.
431	
432	lacp_rate
433	
434		Option specifying the rate in which we'll ask our link partner
435		to transmit LACPDU packets in 802.3ad mode.  Possible values
436		are:
437	
438		slow or 0
439			Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 30 seconds
440	
441		fast or 1
442			Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 1 second
443	
444		The default is slow.
445	
446	max_bonds
447	
448		Specifies the number of bonding devices to create for this
449		instance of the bonding driver.  E.g., if max_bonds is 3, and
450		the bonding driver is not already loaded, then bond0, bond1
451		and bond2 will be created.  The default value is 1.  Specifying
452		a value of 0 will load bonding, but will not create any devices.
453	
454	miimon
455	
456		Specifies the MII link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.
457		This determines how often the link state of each slave is
458		inspected for link failures.  A value of zero disables MII
459		link monitoring.  A value of 100 is a good starting point.
460		The use_carrier option, below, affects how the link state is
461		determined.  See the High Availability section for additional
462		information.  The default value is 0.
463	
464	min_links
465	
466		Specifies the minimum number of links that must be active before
467		asserting carrier. It is similar to the Cisco EtherChannel min-links
468		feature. This allows setting the minimum number of member ports that
469		must be up (link-up state) before marking the bond device as up
470		(carrier on). This is useful for situations where higher level services
471		such as clustering want to ensure a minimum number of low bandwidth
472		links are active before switchover. This option only affect 802.3ad
473		mode.
474	
475		The default value is 0. This will cause carrier to be asserted (for
476		802.3ad mode) whenever there is an active aggregator, regardless of the
477		number of available links in that aggregator. Note that, because an
478		aggregator cannot be active without at least one available link,
479		setting this option to 0 or to 1 has the exact same effect.
480	
481	mode
482	
483		Specifies one of the bonding policies. The default is
484		balance-rr (round robin).  Possible values are:
485	
486		balance-rr or 0
487	
488			Round-robin policy: Transmit packets in sequential
489			order from the first available slave through the
490			last.  This mode provides load balancing and fault
491			tolerance.
492	
493		active-backup or 1
494	
495			Active-backup policy: Only one slave in the bond is
496			active.  A different slave becomes active if, and only
497			if, the active slave fails.  The bond's MAC address is
498			externally visible on only one port (network adapter)
499			to avoid confusing the switch.
500	
501			In bonding version 2.6.2 or later, when a failover
502			occurs in active-backup mode, bonding will issue one
503			or more gratuitous ARPs on the newly active slave.
504			One gratuitous ARP is issued for the bonding master
505			interface and each VLAN interfaces configured above
506			it, provided that the interface has at least one IP
507			address configured.  Gratuitous ARPs issued for VLAN
508			interfaces are tagged with the appropriate VLAN id.
509	
510			This mode provides fault tolerance.  The primary
511			option, documented below, affects the behavior of this
512			mode.
513	
514		balance-xor or 2
515	
516			XOR policy: Transmit based on the selected transmit
517			hash policy.  The default policy is a simple [(source
518			MAC address XOR'd with destination MAC address) modulo
519			slave count].  Alternate transmit policies may be
520			selected via the xmit_hash_policy option, described
521			below.
522	
523			This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
524	
525		broadcast or 3
526	
527			Broadcast policy: transmits everything on all slave
528			interfaces.  This mode provides fault tolerance.
529	
530		802.3ad or 4
531	
532			IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation.  Creates
533			aggregation groups that share the same speed and
534			duplex settings.  Utilizes all slaves in the active
535			aggregator according to the 802.3ad specification.
536	
537			Slave selection for outgoing traffic is done according
538			to the transmit hash policy, which may be changed from
539			the default simple XOR policy via the xmit_hash_policy
540			option, documented below.  Note that not all transmit
541			policies may be 802.3ad compliant, particularly in
542			regards to the packet mis-ordering requirements of
543			section 43.2.4 of the 802.3ad standard.  Differing
544			peer implementations will have varying tolerances for
545			noncompliance.
546	
547			Prerequisites:
548	
549			1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving
550			the speed and duplex of each slave.
551	
552			2. A switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link
553			aggregation.
554	
555			Most switches will require some type of configuration
556			to enable 802.3ad mode.
557	
558		balance-tlb or 5
559	
560			Adaptive transmit load balancing: channel bonding that
561			does not require any special switch support.  The
562			outgoing traffic is distributed according to the
563			current load (computed relative to the speed) on each
564			slave.  Incoming traffic is received by the current
565			slave.  If the receiving slave fails, another slave
566			takes over the MAC address of the failed receiving
567			slave.
568	
569			Prerequisite:
570	
571			Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving the
572			speed of each slave.
573	
574		balance-alb or 6
575	
576			Adaptive load balancing: includes balance-tlb plus
577			receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and
578			does not require any special switch support.  The
579			receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation.
580			The bonding driver intercepts the ARP Replies sent by
581			the local system on their way out and overwrites the
582			source hardware address with the unique hardware
583			address of one of the slaves in the bond such that
584			different peers use different hardware addresses for
585			the server.
586	
587			Receive traffic from connections created by the server
588			is also balanced.  When the local system sends an ARP
589			Request the bonding driver copies and saves the peer's
590			IP information from the ARP packet.  When the ARP
591			Reply arrives from the peer, its hardware address is
592			retrieved and the bonding driver initiates an ARP
593			reply to this peer assigning it to one of the slaves
594			in the bond.  A problematic outcome of using ARP
595			negotiation for balancing is that each time that an
596			ARP request is broadcast it uses the hardware address
597			of the bond.  Hence, peers learn the hardware address
598			of the bond and the balancing of receive traffic
599			collapses to the current slave.  This is handled by
600			sending updates (ARP Replies) to all the peers with
601			their individually assigned hardware address such that
602			the traffic is redistributed.  Receive traffic is also
603			redistributed when a new slave is added to the bond
604			and when an inactive slave is re-activated.  The
605			receive load is distributed sequentially (round robin)
606			among the group of highest speed slaves in the bond.
607	
608			When a link is reconnected or a new slave joins the
609			bond the receive traffic is redistributed among all
610			active slaves in the bond by initiating ARP Replies
611			with the selected MAC address to each of the
612			clients. The updelay parameter (detailed below) must
613			be set to a value equal or greater than the switch's
614			forwarding delay so that the ARP Replies sent to the
615			peers will not be blocked by the switch.
616	
617			Prerequisites:
618	
619			1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving
620			the speed of each slave.
621	
622			2. Base driver support for setting the hardware
623			address of a device while it is open.  This is
624			required so that there will always be one slave in the
625			team using the bond hardware address (the
626			curr_active_slave) while having a unique hardware
627			address for each slave in the bond.  If the
628			curr_active_slave fails its hardware address is
629			swapped with the new curr_active_slave that was
630			chosen.
631	
632	num_grat_arp
633	num_unsol_na
634	
635		Specify the number of peer notifications (gratuitous ARPs and
636		unsolicited IPv6 Neighbor Advertisements) to be issued after a
637		failover event.  As soon as the link is up on the new slave
638		(possibly immediately) a peer notification is sent on the
639		bonding device and each VLAN sub-device.  This is repeated at
640		each link monitor interval (arp_interval or miimon, whichever
641		is active) if the number is greater than 1.
642	
643		The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1.  These options
644		affect only the active-backup mode.  These options were added for
645		bonding versions 3.3.0 and 3.4.0 respectively.
646	
647		From Linux 3.0 and bonding version 3.7.1, these notifications
648		are generated by the ipv4 and ipv6 code and the numbers of
649		repetitions cannot be set independently.
650	
651	primary
652	
653		A string (eth0, eth2, etc) specifying which slave is the
654		primary device.  The specified device will always be the
655		active slave while it is available.  Only when the primary is
656		off-line will alternate devices be used.  This is useful when
657		one slave is preferred over another, e.g., when one slave has
658		higher throughput than another.
659	
660		The primary option is only valid for active-backup mode.
661	
662	primary_reselect
663	
664		Specifies the reselection policy for the primary slave.  This
665		affects how the primary slave is chosen to become the active slave
666		when failure of the active slave or recovery of the primary slave
667		occurs.  This option is designed to prevent flip-flopping between
668		the primary slave and other slaves.  Possible values are:
669	
670		always or 0 (default)
671	
672			The primary slave becomes the active slave whenever it
673			comes back up.
674	
675		better or 1
676	
677			The primary slave becomes the active slave when it comes
678			back up, if the speed and duplex of the primary slave is
679			better than the speed and duplex of the current active
680			slave.
681	
682		failure or 2
683	
684			The primary slave becomes the active slave only if the
685			current active slave fails and the primary slave is up.
686	
687		The primary_reselect setting is ignored in two cases:
688	
689			If no slaves are active, the first slave to recover is
690			made the active slave.
691	
692			When initially enslaved, the primary slave is always made
693			the active slave.
694	
695		Changing the primary_reselect policy via sysfs will cause an
696		immediate selection of the best active slave according to the new
697		policy.  This may or may not result in a change of the active
698		slave, depending upon the circumstances.
699	
700		This option was added for bonding version 3.6.0.
701	
702	updelay
703	
704		Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before enabling a
705		slave after a link recovery has been detected.  This option is
706		only valid for the miimon link monitor.  The updelay value
707		should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it will be
708		rounded down to the nearest multiple.  The default value is 0.
709	
710	use_carrier
711	
712		Specifies whether or not miimon should use MII or ETHTOOL
713		ioctls vs. netif_carrier_ok() to determine the link
714		status. The MII or ETHTOOL ioctls are less efficient and
715		utilize a deprecated calling sequence within the kernel.  The
716		netif_carrier_ok() relies on the device driver to maintain its
717		state with netif_carrier_on/off; at this writing, most, but
718		not all, device drivers support this facility.
719	
720		If bonding insists that the link is up when it should not be,
721		it may be that your network device driver does not support
722		netif_carrier_on/off.  The default state for netif_carrier is
723		"carrier on," so if a driver does not support netif_carrier,
724		it will appear as if the link is always up.  In this case,
725		setting use_carrier to 0 will cause bonding to revert to the
726		MII / ETHTOOL ioctl method to determine the link state.
727	
728		A value of 1 enables the use of netif_carrier_ok(), a value of
729		0 will use the deprecated MII / ETHTOOL ioctls.  The default
730		value is 1.
731	
732	xmit_hash_policy
733	
734		Selects the transmit hash policy to use for slave selection in
735		balance-xor and 802.3ad modes.  Possible values are:
736	
737		layer2
738	
739			Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses to generate the
740			hash.  The formula is
741	
742			(source MAC XOR destination MAC) modulo slave count
743	
744			This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular
745			network peer on the same slave.
746	
747			This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant.
748	
749		layer2+3
750	
751			This policy uses a combination of layer2 and layer3
752			protocol information to generate the hash.
753	
754			Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and IP addresses to
755			generate the hash.  The IPv4 formula is
756	
757			(((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff) XOR
758				( source MAC XOR destination MAC ))
759					modulo slave count
760	
761			The IPv6 formula is
762	
763			hash = (source ip quad 2 XOR dest IP quad 2) XOR
764			       (source ip quad 3 XOR dest IP quad 3) XOR
765			       (source ip quad 4 XOR dest IP quad 4)
766	
767			(((hash >> 24) XOR (hash >> 16) XOR (hash >> 8) XOR hash)
768				XOR (source MAC XOR destination MAC))
769					modulo slave count
770	
771			This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular
772			network peer on the same slave.  For non-IP traffic,
773			the formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit
774			hash policy.
775	
776			This policy is intended to provide a more balanced
777			distribution of traffic than layer2 alone, especially
778			in environments where a layer3 gateway device is
779			required to reach most destinations.
780	
781			This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant.
782	
783		layer3+4
784	
785			This policy uses upper layer protocol information,
786			when available, to generate the hash.  This allows for
787			traffic to a particular network peer to span multiple
788			slaves, although a single connection will not span
789			multiple slaves.
790	
791			The formula for unfragmented IPv4 TCP and UDP packets is
792	
793			((source port XOR dest port) XOR
794				 ((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff)
795					modulo slave count
796	
797			The formula for unfragmented IPv6 TCP and UDP packets is
798	
799			hash = (source port XOR dest port) XOR
800			       ((source ip quad 2 XOR dest IP quad 2) XOR
801				(source ip quad 3 XOR dest IP quad 3) XOR
802				(source ip quad 4 XOR dest IP quad 4))
803	
804			((hash >> 24) XOR (hash >> 16) XOR (hash >> 8) XOR hash)
805				modulo slave count
806	
807			For fragmented TCP or UDP packets and all other IPv4 and
808			IPv6 protocol traffic, the source and destination port
809			information is omitted.  For non-IP traffic, the
810			formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit hash
811			policy.
812	
813			The IPv4 policy is intended to mimic the behavior of
814			certain switches, notably Cisco switches with PFC2 as
815			well as some Foundry and IBM products.
816	
817			This algorithm is not fully 802.3ad compliant.  A
818			single TCP or UDP conversation containing both
819			fragmented and unfragmented packets will see packets
820			striped across two interfaces.  This may result in out
821			of order delivery.  Most traffic types will not meet
822			this criteria, as TCP rarely fragments traffic, and
823			most UDP traffic is not involved in extended
824			conversations.  Other implementations of 802.3ad may
825			or may not tolerate this noncompliance.
826	
827		The default value is layer2.  This option was added in bonding
828		version 2.6.3.  In earlier versions of bonding, this parameter
829		does not exist, and the layer2 policy is the only policy.  The
830		layer2+3 value was added for bonding version 3.2.2.
831	
832	resend_igmp
833	
834		Specifies the number of IGMP membership reports to be issued after
835		a failover event. One membership report is issued immediately after
836		the failover, subsequent packets are sent in each 200ms interval.
837	
838		The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. A value of 0
839		prevents the IGMP membership report from being issued in response
840		to the failover event.
841	
842		This option is useful for bonding modes balance-rr (0), active-backup
843		(1), balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6), in which a failover can
844		switch the IGMP traffic from one slave to another.  Therefore a fresh
845		IGMP report must be issued to cause the switch to forward the incoming
846		IGMP traffic over the newly selected slave.
847	
848		This option was added for bonding version 3.7.0.
849	
850	3. Configuring Bonding Devices
851	==============================
852	
853		You can configure bonding using either your distro's network
854	initialization scripts, or manually using either ifenslave or the
855	sysfs interface.  Distros generally use one of three packages for the
856	network initialization scripts: initscripts, sysconfig or interfaces.
857	Recent versions of these packages have support for bonding, while older
858	versions do not.
859	
860		We will first describe the options for configuring bonding for
861	distros using versions of initscripts, sysconfig and interfaces with full
862	or partial support for bonding, then provide information on enabling
863	bonding without support from the network initialization scripts (i.e.,
864	older versions of initscripts or sysconfig).
865	
866		If you're unsure whether your distro uses sysconfig,
867	initscripts or interfaces, or don't know if it's new enough, have no fear.
868	Determining this is fairly straightforward.
869	
870		First, look for a file called interfaces in /etc/network directory.
871	If this file is present in your system, then your system use interfaces. See
872	Configuration with Interfaces Support.
873	
874		Else, issue the command:
875	
876	$ rpm -qf /sbin/ifup
877	
878		It will respond with a line of text starting with either
879	"initscripts" or "sysconfig," followed by some numbers.  This is the
880	package that provides your network initialization scripts.
881	
882		Next, to determine if your installation supports bonding,
883	issue the command:
884	
885	$ grep ifenslave /sbin/ifup
886	
887		If this returns any matches, then your initscripts or
888	sysconfig has support for bonding.
889	
890	3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support
891	----------------------------------------
892	
893		This section applies to distros using a version of sysconfig
894	with bonding support, for example, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.
895	
896		SuSE SLES 9's networking configuration system does support
897	bonding, however, at this writing, the YaST system configuration
898	front end does not provide any means to work with bonding devices.
899	Bonding devices can be managed by hand, however, as follows.
900	
901		First, if they have not already been configured, configure the
902	slave devices.  On SLES 9, this is most easily done by running the
903	yast2 sysconfig configuration utility.  The goal is for to create an
904	ifcfg-id file for each slave device.  The simplest way to accomplish
905	this is to configure the devices for DHCP (this is only to get the
906	file ifcfg-id file created; see below for some issues with DHCP).  The
907	name of the configuration file for each device will be of the form:
908	
909	ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
910	
911		Where the "xx" portion will be replaced with the digits from
912	the device's permanent MAC address.
913	
914		Once the set of ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files has been
915	created, it is necessary to edit the configuration files for the slave
916	devices (the MAC addresses correspond to those of the slave devices).
917	Before editing, the file will contain multiple lines, and will look
918	something like this:
919	
920	BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
921	STARTMODE='on'
922	USERCTL='no'
923	UNIQUE='XNzu.WeZGOGF+4wE'
924	_nm_name='bus-pci-0001:61:01.0'
925	
926		Change the BOOTPROTO and STARTMODE lines to the following:
927	
928	BOOTPROTO='none'
929	STARTMODE='off'
930	
931		Do not alter the UNIQUE or _nm_name lines.  Remove any other
932	lines (USERCTL, etc).
933	
934		Once the ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files have been modified,
935	it's time to create the configuration file for the bonding device
936	itself.  This file is named ifcfg-bondX, where X is the number of the
937	bonding device to create, starting at 0.  The first such file is
938	ifcfg-bond0, the second is ifcfg-bond1, and so on.  The sysconfig
939	network configuration system will correctly start multiple instances
940	of bonding.
941	
942		The contents of the ifcfg-bondX file is as follows:
943	
944	BOOTPROTO="static"
945	BROADCAST="10.0.2.255"
946	IPADDR="10.0.2.10"
947	NETMASK="255.255.0.0"
948	NETWORK="10.0.2.0"
949	REMOTE_IPADDR=""
950	STARTMODE="onboot"
951	BONDING_MASTER="yes"
952	BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=active-backup miimon=100"
953	BONDING_SLAVE0="eth0"
954	BONDING_SLAVE1="bus-pci-0000:06:08.1"
955	
956		Replace the sample BROADCAST, IPADDR, NETMASK and NETWORK
957	values with the appropriate values for your network.
958	
959		The STARTMODE specifies when the device is brought online.
960	The possible values are:
961	
962		onboot:	 The device is started at boot time.  If you're not
963			 sure, this is probably what you want.
964	
965		manual:	 The device is started only when ifup is called
966			 manually.  Bonding devices may be configured this
967			 way if you do not wish them to start automatically
968			 at boot for some reason.
969	
970		hotplug: The device is started by a hotplug event.  This is not
971			 a valid choice for a bonding device.
972	
973		off or ignore: The device configuration is ignored.
974	
975		The line BONDING_MASTER='yes' indicates that the device is a
976	bonding master device.  The only useful value is "yes."
977	
978		The contents of BONDING_MODULE_OPTS are supplied to the
979	instance of the bonding module for this device.  Specify the options
980	for the bonding mode, link monitoring, and so on here.  Do not include
981	the max_bonds bonding parameter; this will confuse the configuration
982	system if you have multiple bonding devices.
983	
984		Finally, supply one BONDING_SLAVEn="slave device" for each
985	slave.  where "n" is an increasing value, one for each slave.  The
986	"slave device" is either an interface name, e.g., "eth0", or a device
987	specifier for the network device.  The interface name is easier to
988	find, but the ethN names are subject to change at boot time if, e.g.,
989	a device early in the sequence has failed.  The device specifiers
990	(bus-pci-0000:06:08.1 in the example above) specify the physical
991	network device, and will not change unless the device's bus location
992	changes (for example, it is moved from one PCI slot to another).  The
993	example above uses one of each type for demonstration purposes; most
994	configurations will choose one or the other for all slave devices.
995	
996		When all configuration files have been modified or created,
997	networking must be restarted for the configuration changes to take
998	effect.  This can be accomplished via the following:
999	
1000	# /etc/init.d/network restart
1001	
1002		Note that the network control script (/sbin/ifdown) will
1003	remove the bonding module as part of the network shutdown processing,
1004	so it is not necessary to remove the module by hand if, e.g., the
1005	module parameters have changed.
1006	
1007		Also, at this writing, YaST/YaST2 will not manage bonding
1008	devices (they do not show bonding interfaces on its list of network
1009	devices).  It is necessary to edit the configuration file by hand to
1010	change the bonding configuration.
1011	
1012		Additional general options and details of the ifcfg file
1013	format can be found in an example ifcfg template file:
1014	
1015	/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template
1016	
1017		Note that the template does not document the various BONDING_
1018	settings described above, but does describe many of the other options.
1019	
1020	3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig
1021	-------------------------------
1022	
1023		Under sysconfig, configuring a device with BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
1024	will cause it to query DHCP for its IP address information.  At this
1025	writing, this does not function for bonding devices; the scripts
1026	attempt to obtain the device address from DHCP prior to adding any of
1027	the slave devices.  Without active slaves, the DHCP requests are not
1028	sent to the network.
1029	
1030	3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig
1031	-----------------------------------------------
1032	
1033		The sysconfig network initialization system is capable of
1034	handling multiple bonding devices.  All that is necessary is for each
1035	bonding instance to have an appropriately configured ifcfg-bondX file
1036	(as described above).  Do not specify the "max_bonds" parameter to any
1037	instance of bonding, as this will confuse sysconfig.  If you require
1038	multiple bonding devices with identical parameters, create multiple
1039	ifcfg-bondX files.
1040	
1041		Because the sysconfig scripts supply the bonding module
1042	options in the ifcfg-bondX file, it is not necessary to add them to
1043	the system /etc/modules.d/*.conf configuration files.
1044	
1045	3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support
1046	------------------------------------------
1047	
1048		This section applies to distros using a recent version of
1049	initscripts with bonding support, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1050	version 3 or later, Fedora, etc.  On these systems, the network
1051	initialization scripts have knowledge of bonding, and can be configured to
1052	control bonding devices.  Note that older versions of the initscripts
1053	package have lower levels of support for bonding; this will be noted where
1054	applicable.
1055	
1056		These distros will not automatically load the network adapter
1057	driver unless the ethX device is configured with an IP address.
1058	Because of this constraint, users must manually configure a
1059	network-script file for all physical adapters that will be members of
1060	a bondX link.  Network script files are located in the directory:
1061	
1062	/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
1063	
1064		The file name must be prefixed with "ifcfg-eth" and suffixed
1065	with the adapter's physical adapter number.  For example, the script
1066	for eth0 would be named /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.
1067	Place the following text in the file:
1068	
1069	DEVICE=eth0
1070	USERCTL=no
1071	ONBOOT=yes
1072	MASTER=bond0
1073	SLAVE=yes
1074	BOOTPROTO=none
1075	
1076		The DEVICE= line will be different for every ethX device and
1077	must correspond with the name of the file, i.e., ifcfg-eth1 must have
1078	a device line of DEVICE=eth1.  The setting of the MASTER= line will
1079	also depend on the final bonding interface name chosen for your bond.
1080	As with other network devices, these typically start at 0, and go up
1081	one for each device, i.e., the first bonding instance is bond0, the
1082	second is bond1, and so on.
1083	
1084		Next, create a bond network script.  The file name for this
1085	script will be /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bondX where X is
1086	the number of the bond.  For bond0 the file is named "ifcfg-bond0",
1087	for bond1 it is named "ifcfg-bond1", and so on.  Within that file,
1088	place the following text:
1089	
1090	DEVICE=bond0
1091	IPADDR=192.168.1.1
1092	NETMASK=255.255.255.0
1093	NETWORK=192.168.1.0
1094	BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
1095	ONBOOT=yes
1096	BOOTPROTO=none
1097	USERCTL=no
1098	
1099		Be sure to change the networking specific lines (IPADDR,
1100	NETMASK, NETWORK and BROADCAST) to match your network configuration.
1101	
1102		For later versions of initscripts, such as that found with Fedora
1103	7 (or later) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5 (or later), it is possible,
1104	and, indeed, preferable, to specify the bonding options in the ifcfg-bond0
1105	file, e.g. a line of the format:
1106	
1107	BONDING_OPTS="mode=active-backup arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.1.254"
1108	
1109		will configure the bond with the specified options.  The options
1110	specified in BONDING_OPTS are identical to the bonding module parameters
1111	except for the arp_ip_target field when using versions of initscripts older
1112	than and 8.57 (Fedora 8) and 8.45.19 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2).  When
1113	using older versions each target should be included as a separate option and
1114	should be preceded by a '+' to indicate it should be added to the list of
1115	queried targets, e.g.,
1116	
1117		arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.1 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.2
1118	
1119		is the proper syntax to specify multiple targets.  When specifying
1120	options via BONDING_OPTS, it is not necessary to edit /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf.
1121	
1122		For even older versions of initscripts that do not support
1123	BONDING_OPTS, it is necessary to edit /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf, depending upon
1124	your distro) to load the bonding module with your desired options when the
1125	bond0 interface is brought up.  The following lines in /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf
1126	will load the bonding module, and select its options:
1127	
1128	alias bond0 bonding
1129	options bond0 mode=balance-alb miimon=100
1130	
1131		Replace the sample parameters with the appropriate set of
1132	options for your configuration.
1133	
1134		Finally run "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart" as root.  This
1135	will restart the networking subsystem and your bond link should be now
1136	up and running.
1137	
1138	3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts
1139	---------------------------------
1140	
1141		Recent versions of initscripts (the versions supplied with Fedora
1142	Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or later versions, are reported to
1143	work) have support for assigning IP information to bonding devices via
1144	DHCP.
1145	
1146		To configure bonding for DHCP, configure it as described
1147	above, except replace the line "BOOTPROTO=none" with "BOOTPROTO=dhcp"
1148	and add a line consisting of "TYPE=Bonding".  Note that the TYPE value
1149	is case sensitive.
1150	
1151	3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts
1152	-------------------------------------------------
1153	
1154		Initscripts packages that are included with Fedora 7 and Red Hat
1155	Enterprise Linux 5 support multiple bonding interfaces by simply
1156	specifying the appropriate BONDING_OPTS= in ifcfg-bondX where X is the
1157	number of the bond.  This support requires sysfs support in the kernel,
1158	and a bonding driver of version 3.0.0 or later.  Other configurations may
1159	not support this method for specifying multiple bonding interfaces; for
1160	those instances, see the "Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually" section,
1161	below.
1162	
1163	3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave
1164	-----------------------------------------------
1165	
1166		This section applies to distros whose network initialization
1167	scripts (the sysconfig or initscripts package) do not have specific
1168	knowledge of bonding.  One such distro is SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
1169	version 8.
1170	
1171		The general method for these systems is to place the bonding
1172	module parameters into a config file in /etc/modprobe.d/ (as
1173	appropriate for the installed distro), then add modprobe and/or
1174	ifenslave commands to the system's global init script.  The name of
1175	the global init script differs; for sysconfig, it is
1176	/etc/init.d/boot.local and for initscripts it is /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
1177	
1178		For example, if you wanted to make a simple bond of two e100
1179	devices (presumed to be eth0 and eth1), and have it persist across
1180	reboots, edit the appropriate file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or
1181	/etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the following:
1182	
1183	modprobe bonding mode=balance-alb miimon=100
1184	modprobe e100
1185	ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1186	ifenslave bond0 eth0
1187	ifenslave bond0 eth1
1188	
1189		Replace the example bonding module parameters and bond0
1190	network configuration (IP address, netmask, etc) with the appropriate
1191	values for your configuration.
1192	
1193		Unfortunately, this method will not provide support for the
1194	ifup and ifdown scripts on the bond devices.  To reload the bonding
1195	configuration, it is necessary to run the initialization script, e.g.,
1196	
1197	# /etc/init.d/boot.local
1198	
1199		or
1200	
1201	# /etc/rc.d/rc.local
1202	
1203		It may be desirable in such a case to create a separate script
1204	which only initializes the bonding configuration, then call that
1205	separate script from within boot.local.  This allows for bonding to be
1206	enabled without re-running the entire global init script.
1207	
1208		To shut down the bonding devices, it is necessary to first
1209	mark the bonding device itself as being down, then remove the
1210	appropriate device driver modules.  For our example above, you can do
1211	the following:
1212	
1213	# ifconfig bond0 down
1214	# rmmod bonding
1215	# rmmod e100
1216	
1217		Again, for convenience, it may be desirable to create a script
1218	with these commands.
1219	
1220	
1221	3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually
1222	-----------------------------------------
1223	
1224		This section contains information on configuring multiple
1225	bonding devices with differing options for those systems whose network
1226	initialization scripts lack support for configuring multiple bonds.
1227	
1228		If you require multiple bonding devices, but all with the same
1229	options, you may wish to use the "max_bonds" module parameter,
1230	documented above.
1231	
1232		To create multiple bonding devices with differing options, it is
1233	preferable to use bonding parameters exported by sysfs, documented in the
1234	section below.
1235	
1236		For versions of bonding without sysfs support, the only means to
1237	provide multiple instances of bonding with differing options is to load
1238	the bonding driver multiple times.  Note that current versions of the
1239	sysconfig network initialization scripts handle this automatically; if
1240	your distro uses these scripts, no special action is needed.  See the
1241	section Configuring Bonding Devices, above, if you're not sure about your
1242	network initialization scripts.
1243	
1244		To load multiple instances of the module, it is necessary to
1245	specify a different name for each instance (the module loading system
1246	requires that every loaded module, even multiple instances of the same
1247	module, have a unique name).  This is accomplished by supplying multiple
1248	sets of bonding options in /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf, for example:
1249	
1250	alias bond0 bonding
1251	options bond0 -o bond0 mode=balance-rr miimon=100
1252	
1253	alias bond1 bonding
1254	options bond1 -o bond1 mode=balance-alb miimon=50
1255	
1256		will load the bonding module two times.  The first instance is
1257	named "bond0" and creates the bond0 device in balance-rr mode with an
1258	miimon of 100.  The second instance is named "bond1" and creates the
1259	bond1 device in balance-alb mode with an miimon of 50.
1260	
1261		In some circumstances (typically with older distributions),
1262	the above does not work, and the second bonding instance never sees
1263	its options.  In that case, the second options line can be substituted
1264	as follows:
1265	
1266	install bond1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding -o bond1 \
1267		mode=balance-alb miimon=50
1268	
1269		This may be repeated any number of times, specifying a new and
1270	unique name in place of bond1 for each subsequent instance.
1271	
1272		It has been observed that some Red Hat supplied kernels are unable
1273	to rename modules at load time (the "-o bond1" part).  Attempts to pass
1274	that option to modprobe will produce an "Operation not permitted" error.
1275	This has been reported on some Fedora Core kernels, and has been seen on
1276	RHEL 4 as well.  On kernels exhibiting this problem, it will be impossible
1277	to configure multiple bonds with differing parameters (as they are older
1278	kernels, and also lack sysfs support).
1279	
1280	3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs
1281	------------------------------------------
1282	
1283		Starting with version 3.0.0, Channel Bonding may be configured
1284	via the sysfs interface.  This interface allows dynamic configuration
1285	of all bonds in the system without unloading the module.  It also
1286	allows for adding and removing bonds at runtime.  Ifenslave is no
1287	longer required, though it is still supported.
1288	
1289		Use of the sysfs interface allows you to use multiple bonds
1290	with different configurations without having to reload the module.
1291	It also allows you to use multiple, differently configured bonds when
1292	bonding is compiled into the kernel.
1293	
1294		You must have the sysfs filesystem mounted to configure
1295	bonding this way.  The examples in this document assume that you
1296	are using the standard mount point for sysfs, e.g. /sys.  If your
1297	sysfs filesystem is mounted elsewhere, you will need to adjust the
1298	example paths accordingly.
1299	
1300	Creating and Destroying Bonds
1301	-----------------------------
1302	To add a new bond foo:
1303	# echo +foo > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1304	
1305	To remove an existing bond bar:
1306	# echo -bar > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1307	
1308	To show all existing bonds:
1309	# cat /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1310	
1311	NOTE: due to 4K size limitation of sysfs files, this list may be
1312	truncated if you have more than a few hundred bonds.  This is unlikely
1313	to occur under normal operating conditions.
1314	
1315	Adding and Removing Slaves
1316	--------------------------
1317		Interfaces may be enslaved to a bond using the file
1318	/sys/class/net/<bond>/bonding/slaves.  The semantics for this file
1319	are the same as for the bonding_masters file.
1320	
1321	To enslave interface eth0 to bond bond0:
1322	# ifconfig bond0 up
1323	# echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1324	
1325	To free slave eth0 from bond bond0:
1326	# echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1327	
1328		When an interface is enslaved to a bond, symlinks between the
1329	two are created in the sysfs filesystem.  In this case, you would get
1330	/sys/class/net/bond0/slave_eth0 pointing to /sys/class/net/eth0, and
1331	/sys/class/net/eth0/master pointing to /sys/class/net/bond0.
1332	
1333		This means that you can tell quickly whether or not an
1334	interface is enslaved by looking for the master symlink.  Thus:
1335	# echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/eth0/master/bonding/slaves
1336	will free eth0 from whatever bond it is enslaved to, regardless of
1337	the name of the bond interface.
1338	
1339	Changing a Bond's Configuration
1340	-------------------------------
1341		Each bond may be configured individually by manipulating the
1342	files located in /sys/class/net/<bond name>/bonding
1343	
1344		The names of these files correspond directly with the command-
1345	line parameters described elsewhere in this file, and, with the
1346	exception of arp_ip_target, they accept the same values.  To see the
1347	current setting, simply cat the appropriate file.
1348	
1349		A few examples will be given here; for specific usage
1350	guidelines for each parameter, see the appropriate section in this
1351	document.
1352	
1353	To configure bond0 for balance-alb mode:
1354	# ifconfig bond0 down
1355	# echo 6 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1356	 - or -
1357	# echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1358		NOTE: The bond interface must be down before the mode can be
1359	changed.
1360	
1361	To enable MII monitoring on bond0 with a 1 second interval:
1362	# echo 1000 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon
1363		NOTE: If ARP monitoring is enabled, it will disabled when MII
1364	monitoring is enabled, and vice-versa.
1365	
1366	To add ARP targets:
1367	# echo +192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1368	# echo +192.168.0.101 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1369		NOTE:  up to 16 target addresses may be specified.
1370	
1371	To remove an ARP target:
1372	# echo -192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1373	
1374	Example Configuration
1375	---------------------
1376		We begin with the same example that is shown in section 3.3,
1377	executed with sysfs, and without using ifenslave.
1378	
1379		To make a simple bond of two e100 devices (presumed to be eth0
1380	and eth1), and have it persist across reboots, edit the appropriate
1381	file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the
1382	following:
1383	
1384	modprobe bonding
1385	modprobe e100
1386	echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1387	ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1388	echo 100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon
1389	echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1390	echo +eth1 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1391	
1392		To add a second bond, with two e1000 interfaces in
1393	active-backup mode, using ARP monitoring, add the following lines to
1394	your init script:
1395	
1396	modprobe e1000
1397	echo +bond1 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1398	echo active-backup > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/mode
1399	ifconfig bond1 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1400	echo +192.168.2.100 /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_ip_target
1401	echo 2000 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_interval
1402	echo +eth2 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves
1403	echo +eth3 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves
1404	
1405	3.5 Configuration with Interfaces Support
1406	-----------------------------------------
1407	
1408	        This section applies to distros which use /etc/network/interfaces file
1409	to describe network interface configuration, most notably Debian and it's
1410	derivatives.
1411	
1412		The ifup and ifdown commands on Debian don't support bonding out of
1413	the box. The ifenslave-2.6 package should be installed to provide bonding
1414	support.  Once installed, this package will provide bond-* options to be used
1415	into /etc/network/interfaces.
1416	
1417		Note that ifenslave-2.6 package will load the bonding module and use
1418	the ifenslave command when appropriate.
1419	
1420	Example Configurations
1421	----------------------
1422	
1423	In /etc/network/interfaces, the following stanza will configure bond0, in
1424	active-backup mode, with eth0 and eth1 as slaves.
1425	
1426	auto bond0
1427	iface bond0 inet dhcp
1428		bond-slaves eth0 eth1
1429		bond-mode active-backup
1430		bond-miimon 100
1431		bond-primary eth0 eth1
1432	
1433	If the above configuration doesn't work, you might have a system using
1434	upstart for system startup. This is most notably true for recent
1435	Ubuntu versions. The following stanza in /etc/network/interfaces will
1436	produce the same result on those systems.
1437	
1438	auto bond0
1439	iface bond0 inet dhcp
1440		bond-slaves none
1441		bond-mode active-backup
1442		bond-miimon 100
1443	
1444	auto eth0
1445	iface eth0 inet manual
1446		bond-master bond0
1447		bond-primary eth0 eth1
1448	
1449	auto eth1
1450	iface eth1 inet manual
1451		bond-master bond0
1452		bond-primary eth0 eth1
1453	
1454	For a full list of bond-* supported options in /etc/network/interfaces and some
1455	more advanced examples tailored to you particular distros, see the files in
1456	/usr/share/doc/ifenslave-2.6.
1457	
1458	3.6 Overriding Configuration for Special Cases
1459	----------------------------------------------
1460	
1461	When using the bonding driver, the physical port which transmits a frame is
1462	typically selected by the bonding driver, and is not relevant to the user or
1463	system administrator.  The output port is simply selected using the policies of
1464	the selected bonding mode.  On occasion however, it is helpful to direct certain
1465	classes of traffic to certain physical interfaces on output to implement
1466	slightly more complex policies.  For example, to reach a web server over a
1467	bonded interface in which eth0 connects to a private network, while eth1
1468	connects via a public network, it may be desirous to bias the bond to send said
1469	traffic over eth0 first, using eth1 only as a fall back, while all other traffic
1470	can safely be sent over either interface.  Such configurations may be achieved
1471	using the traffic control utilities inherent in linux.
1472	
1473	By default the bonding driver is multiqueue aware and 16 queues are created
1474	when the driver initializes (see Documentation/networking/multiqueue.txt
1475	for details).  If more or less queues are desired the module parameter
1476	tx_queues can be used to change this value.  There is no sysfs parameter
1477	available as the allocation is done at module init time.
1478	
1479	The output of the file /proc/net/bonding/bondX has changed so the output Queue
1480	ID is now printed for each slave:
1481	
1482	Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)
1483	Primary Slave: None
1484	Currently Active Slave: eth0
1485	MII Status: up
1486	MII Polling Interval (ms): 0
1487	Up Delay (ms): 0
1488	Down Delay (ms): 0
1489	
1490	Slave Interface: eth0
1491	MII Status: up
1492	Link Failure Count: 0
1493	Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cb
1494	Slave queue ID: 0
1495	
1496	Slave Interface: eth1
1497	MII Status: up
1498	Link Failure Count: 0
1499	Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cc
1500	Slave queue ID: 2
1501	
1502	The queue_id for a slave can be set using the command:
1503	
1504	# echo "eth1:2" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/queue_id
1505	
1506	Any interface that needs a queue_id set should set it with multiple calls
1507	like the one above until proper priorities are set for all interfaces.  On
1508	distributions that allow configuration via initscripts, multiple 'queue_id'
1509	arguments can be added to BONDING_OPTS to set all needed slave queues.
1510	
1511	These queue id's can be used in conjunction with the tc utility to configure
1512	a multiqueue qdisc and filters to bias certain traffic to transmit on certain
1513	slave devices.  For instance, say we wanted, in the above configuration to
1514	force all traffic bound to 192.168.1.100 to use eth1 in the bond as its output
1515	device. The following commands would accomplish this:
1516	
1517	# tc qdisc add dev bond0 handle 1 root multiq
1518	
1519	# tc filter add dev bond0 protocol ip parent 1: prio 1 u32 match ip dst \
1520		192.168.1.100 action skbedit queue_mapping 2
1521	
1522	These commands tell the kernel to attach a multiqueue queue discipline to the
1523	bond0 interface and filter traffic enqueued to it, such that packets with a dst
1524	ip of 192.168.1.100 have their output queue mapping value overwritten to 2.
1525	This value is then passed into the driver, causing the normal output path
1526	selection policy to be overridden, selecting instead qid 2, which maps to eth1.
1527	
1528	Note that qid values begin at 1.  Qid 0 is reserved to initiate to the driver
1529	that normal output policy selection should take place.  One benefit to simply
1530	leaving the qid for a slave to 0 is the multiqueue awareness in the bonding
1531	driver that is now present.  This awareness allows tc filters to be placed on
1532	slave devices as well as bond devices and the bonding driver will simply act as
1533	a pass-through for selecting output queues on the slave device rather than 
1534	output port selection.
1535	
1536	This feature first appeared in bonding driver version 3.7.0 and support for
1537	output slave selection was limited to round-robin and active-backup modes.
1538	
1539	4 Querying Bonding Configuration
1540	=================================
1541	
1542	4.1 Bonding Configuration
1543	-------------------------
1544	
1545		Each bonding device has a read-only file residing in the
1546	/proc/net/bonding directory.  The file contents include information
1547	about the bonding configuration, options and state of each slave.
1548	
1549		For example, the contents of /proc/net/bonding/bond0 after the
1550	driver is loaded with parameters of mode=0 and miimon=1000 is
1551	generally as follows:
1552	
1553		Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: 2.6.1 (October 29, 2004)
1554	        Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)
1555	        Currently Active Slave: eth0
1556	        MII Status: up
1557	        MII Polling Interval (ms): 1000
1558	        Up Delay (ms): 0
1559	        Down Delay (ms): 0
1560	
1561	        Slave Interface: eth1
1562	        MII Status: up
1563	        Link Failure Count: 1
1564	
1565	        Slave Interface: eth0
1566	        MII Status: up
1567	        Link Failure Count: 1
1568	
1569		The precise format and contents will change depending upon the
1570	bonding configuration, state, and version of the bonding driver.
1571	
1572	4.2 Network configuration
1573	-------------------------
1574	
1575		The network configuration can be inspected using the ifconfig
1576	command.  Bonding devices will have the MASTER flag set; Bonding slave
1577	devices will have the SLAVE flag set.  The ifconfig output does not
1578	contain information on which slaves are associated with which masters.
1579	
1580		In the example below, the bond0 interface is the master
1581	(MASTER) while eth0 and eth1 are slaves (SLAVE). Notice all slaves of
1582	bond0 have the same MAC address (HWaddr) as bond0 for all modes except
1583	TLB and ALB that require a unique MAC address for each slave.
1584	
1585	# /sbin/ifconfig
1586	bond0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1587	          inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.YYY  Bcast:XXX.XXX.XXX.255  Mask:255.255.252.0
1588	          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
1589	          RX packets:7224794 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1590	          TX packets:3286647 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
1591	          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
1592	
1593	eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1594	          UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
1595	          RX packets:3573025 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1596	          TX packets:1643167 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
1597	          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
1598	          Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1080
1599	
1600	eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1601	          UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
1602	          RX packets:3651769 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1603	          TX packets:1643480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
1604	          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
1605	          Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1400
1606	
1607	5. Switch Configuration
1608	=======================
1609	
1610		For this section, "switch" refers to whatever system the
1611	bonded devices are directly connected to (i.e., where the other end of
1612	the cable plugs into).  This may be an actual dedicated switch device,
1613	or it may be another regular system (e.g., another computer running
1614	Linux),
1615	
1616		The active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes do not
1617	require any specific configuration of the switch.
1618	
1619		The 802.3ad mode requires that the switch have the appropriate
1620	ports configured as an 802.3ad aggregation.  The precise method used
1621	to configure this varies from switch to switch, but, for example, a
1622	Cisco 3550 series switch requires that the appropriate ports first be
1623	grouped together in a single etherchannel instance, then that
1624	etherchannel is set to mode "lacp" to enable 802.3ad (instead of
1625	standard EtherChannel).
1626	
1627		The balance-rr, balance-xor and broadcast modes generally
1628	require that the switch have the appropriate ports grouped together.
1629	The nomenclature for such a group differs between switches, it may be
1630	called an "etherchannel" (as in the Cisco example, above), a "trunk
1631	group" or some other similar variation.  For these modes, each switch
1632	will also have its own configuration options for the switch's transmit
1633	policy to the bond.  Typical choices include XOR of either the MAC or
1634	IP addresses.  The transmit policy of the two peers does not need to
1635	match.  For these three modes, the bonding mode really selects a
1636	transmit policy for an EtherChannel group; all three will interoperate
1637	with another EtherChannel group.
1638	
1639	
1640	6. 802.1q VLAN Support
1641	======================
1642	
1643		It is possible to configure VLAN devices over a bond interface
1644	using the 8021q driver.  However, only packets coming from the 8021q
1645	driver and passing through bonding will be tagged by default.  Self
1646	generated packets, for example, bonding's learning packets or ARP
1647	packets generated by either ALB mode or the ARP monitor mechanism, are
1648	tagged internally by bonding itself.  As a result, bonding must
1649	"learn" the VLAN IDs configured above it, and use those IDs to tag
1650	self generated packets.
1651	
1652		For reasons of simplicity, and to support the use of adapters
1653	that can do VLAN hardware acceleration offloading, the bonding
1654	interface declares itself as fully hardware offloading capable, it gets
1655	the add_vid/kill_vid notifications to gather the necessary
1656	information, and it propagates those actions to the slaves.  In case
1657	of mixed adapter types, hardware accelerated tagged packets that
1658	should go through an adapter that is not offloading capable are
1659	"un-accelerated" by the bonding driver so the VLAN tag sits in the
1660	regular location.
1661	
1662		VLAN interfaces *must* be added on top of a bonding interface
1663	only after enslaving at least one slave.  The bonding interface has a
1664	hardware address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 until the first slave is added.
1665	If the VLAN interface is created prior to the first enslavement, it
1666	would pick up the all-zeroes hardware address.  Once the first slave
1667	is attached to the bond, the bond device itself will pick up the
1668	slave's hardware address, which is then available for the VLAN device.
1669	
1670		Also, be aware that a similar problem can occur if all slaves
1671	are released from a bond that still has one or more VLAN interfaces on
1672	top of it.  When a new slave is added, the bonding interface will
1673	obtain its hardware address from the first slave, which might not
1674	match the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces (which was
1675	ultimately copied from an earlier slave).
1676	
1677		There are two methods to insure that the VLAN device operates
1678	with the correct hardware address if all slaves are removed from a
1679	bond interface:
1680	
1681		1. Remove all VLAN interfaces then recreate them
1682	
1683		2. Set the bonding interface's hardware address so that it
1684	matches the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces.
1685	
1686		Note that changing a VLAN interface's HW address would set the
1687	underlying device -- i.e. the bonding interface -- to promiscuous
1688	mode, which might not be what you want.
1689	
1690	
1691	7. Link Monitoring
1692	==================
1693	
1694		The bonding driver at present supports two schemes for
1695	monitoring a slave device's link state: the ARP monitor and the MII
1696	monitor.
1697	
1698		At the present time, due to implementation restrictions in the
1699	bonding driver itself, it is not possible to enable both ARP and MII
1700	monitoring simultaneously.
1701	
1702	7.1 ARP Monitor Operation
1703	-------------------------
1704	
1705		The ARP monitor operates as its name suggests: it sends ARP
1706	queries to one or more designated peer systems on the network, and
1707	uses the response as an indication that the link is operating.  This
1708	gives some assurance that traffic is actually flowing to and from one
1709	or more peers on the local network.
1710	
1711		The ARP monitor relies on the device driver itself to verify
1712	that traffic is flowing.  In particular, the driver must keep up to
1713	date the last receive time, dev->last_rx, and transmit start time,
1714	dev->trans_start.  If these are not updated by the driver, then the
1715	ARP monitor will immediately fail any slaves using that driver, and
1716	those slaves will stay down.  If networking monitoring (tcpdump, etc)
1717	shows the ARP requests and replies on the network, then it may be that
1718	your device driver is not updating last_rx and trans_start.
1719	
1720	7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets
1721	------------------------------------
1722	
1723		While ARP monitoring can be done with just one target, it can
1724	be useful in a High Availability setup to have several targets to
1725	monitor.  In the case of just one target, the target itself may go
1726	down or have a problem making it unresponsive to ARP requests.  Having
1727	an additional target (or several) increases the reliability of the ARP
1728	monitoring.
1729	
1730		Multiple ARP targets must be separated by commas as follows:
1731	
1732	# example options for ARP monitoring with three targets
1733	alias bond0 bonding
1734	options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.1,192.168.0.3,192.168.0.9
1735	
1736		For just a single target the options would resemble:
1737	
1738	# example options for ARP monitoring with one target
1739	alias bond0 bonding
1740	options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.100
1741	
1742	
1743	7.3 MII Monitor Operation
1744	-------------------------
1745	
1746		The MII monitor monitors only the carrier state of the local
1747	network interface.  It accomplishes this in one of three ways: by
1748	depending upon the device driver to maintain its carrier state, by
1749	querying the device's MII registers, or by making an ethtool query to
1750	the device.
1751	
1752		If the use_carrier module parameter is 1 (the default value),
1753	then the MII monitor will rely on the driver for carrier state
1754	information (via the netif_carrier subsystem).  As explained in the
1755	use_carrier parameter information, above, if the MII monitor fails to
1756	detect carrier loss on the device (e.g., when the cable is physically
1757	disconnected), it may be that the driver does not support
1758	netif_carrier.
1759	
1760		If use_carrier is 0, then the MII monitor will first query the
1761	device's (via ioctl) MII registers and check the link state.  If that
1762	request fails (not just that it returns carrier down), then the MII
1763	monitor will make an ethtool ETHOOL_GLINK request to attempt to obtain
1764	the same information.  If both methods fail (i.e., the driver either
1765	does not support or had some error in processing both the MII register
1766	and ethtool requests), then the MII monitor will assume the link is
1767	up.
1768	
1769	8. Potential Sources of Trouble
1770	===============================
1771	
1772	8.1 Adventures in Routing
1773	-------------------------
1774	
1775		When bonding is configured, it is important that the slave
1776	devices not have routes that supersede routes of the master (or,
1777	generally, not have routes at all).  For example, suppose the bonding
1778	device bond0 has two slaves, eth0 and eth1, and the routing table is
1779	as follows:
1780	
1781	Kernel IP routing table
1782	Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
1783	10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 eth0
1784	10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 eth1
1785	10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 bond0
1786	127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U        40 0          0 lo
1787	
1788		This routing configuration will likely still update the
1789	receive/transmit times in the driver (needed by the ARP monitor), but
1790	may bypass the bonding driver (because outgoing traffic to, in this
1791	case, another host on network 10 would use eth0 or eth1 before bond0).
1792	
1793		The ARP monitor (and ARP itself) may become confused by this
1794	configuration, because ARP requests (generated by the ARP monitor)
1795	will be sent on one interface (bond0), but the corresponding reply
1796	will arrive on a different interface (eth0).  This reply looks to ARP
1797	as an unsolicited ARP reply (because ARP matches replies on an
1798	interface basis), and is discarded.  The MII monitor is not affected
1799	by the state of the routing table.
1800	
1801		The solution here is simply to insure that slaves do not have
1802	routes of their own, and if for some reason they must, those routes do
1803	not supersede routes of their master.  This should generally be the
1804	case, but unusual configurations or errant manual or automatic static
1805	route additions may cause trouble.
1806	
1807	8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming
1808	----------------------------
1809	
1810		On systems with network configuration scripts that do not
1811	associate physical devices directly with network interface names (so
1812	that the same physical device always has the same "ethX" name), it may
1813	be necessary to add some special logic to config files in
1814	/etc/modprobe.d/.
1815	
1816		For example, given a modules.conf containing the following:
1817	
1818	alias bond0 bonding
1819	options bond0 mode=some-mode miimon=50
1820	alias eth0 tg3
1821	alias eth1 tg3
1822	alias eth2 e1000
1823	alias eth3 e1000
1824	
1825		If neither eth0 and eth1 are slaves to bond0, then when the
1826	bond0 interface comes up, the devices may end up reordered.  This
1827	happens because bonding is loaded first, then its slave device's
1828	drivers are loaded next.  Since no other drivers have been loaded,
1829	when the e1000 driver loads, it will receive eth0 and eth1 for its
1830	devices, but the bonding configuration tries to enslave eth2 and eth3
1831	(which may later be assigned to the tg3 devices).
1832	
1833		Adding the following:
1834	
1835	add above bonding e1000 tg3
1836	
1837		causes modprobe to load e1000 then tg3, in that order, when
1838	bonding is loaded.  This command is fully documented in the
1839	modules.conf manual page.
1840	
1841		On systems utilizing modprobe an equivalent problem can occur.
1842	In this case, the following can be added to config files in
1843	/etc/modprobe.d/ as:
1844	
1845	softdep bonding pre: tg3 e1000
1846	
1847		This will load tg3 and e1000 modules before loading the bonding one.
1848	Full documentation on this can be found in the modprobe.d and modprobe
1849	manual pages.
1850	
1851	8.3. Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon
1852	---------------------------------------------------------
1853	
1854		By default, bonding enables the use_carrier option, which
1855	instructs bonding to trust the driver to maintain carrier state.
1856	
1857		As discussed in the options section, above, some drivers do
1858	not support the netif_carrier_on/_off link state tracking system.
1859	With use_carrier enabled, bonding will always see these links as up,
1860	regardless of their actual state.
1861	
1862		Additionally, other drivers do support netif_carrier, but do
1863	not maintain it in real time, e.g., only polling the link state at
1864	some fixed interval.  In this case, miimon will detect failures, but
1865	only after some long period of time has expired.  If it appears that
1866	miimon is very slow in detecting link failures, try specifying
1867	use_carrier=0 to see if that improves the failure detection time.  If
1868	it does, then it may be that the driver checks the carrier state at a
1869	fixed interval, but does not cache the MII register values (so the
1870	use_carrier=0 method of querying the registers directly works).  If
1871	use_carrier=0 does not improve the failover, then the driver may cache
1872	the registers, or the problem may be elsewhere.
1873	
1874		Also, remember that miimon only checks for the device's
1875	carrier state.  It has no way to determine the state of devices on or
1876	beyond other ports of a switch, or if a switch is refusing to pass
1877	traffic while still maintaining carrier on.
1878	
1879	9. SNMP agents
1880	===============
1881	
1882		If running SNMP agents, the bonding driver should be loaded
1883	before any network drivers participating in a bond.  This requirement
1884	is due to the interface index (ipAdEntIfIndex) being associated to
1885	the first interface found with a given IP address.  That is, there is
1886	only one ipAdEntIfIndex for each IP address.  For example, if eth0 and
1887	eth1 are slaves of bond0 and the driver for eth0 is loaded before the
1888	bonding driver, the interface for the IP address will be associated
1889	with the eth0 interface.  This configuration is shown below, the IP
1890	address 192.168.1.1 has an interface index of 2 which indexes to eth0
1891	in the ifDescr table (ifDescr.2).
1892	
1893	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo
1894	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = eth0
1895	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth1
1896	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth2
1897	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth3
1898	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = bond0
1899	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 5
1900	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2
1901	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 4
1902	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1
1903	
1904		This problem is avoided by loading the bonding driver before
1905	any network drivers participating in a bond.  Below is an example of
1906	loading the bonding driver first, the IP address 192.168.1.1 is
1907	correctly associated with ifDescr.2.
1908	
1909	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo
1910	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = bond0
1911	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth0
1912	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth1
1913	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth2
1914	     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = eth3
1915	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 6
1916	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2
1917	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 5
1918	     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1
1919	
1920		While some distributions may not report the interface name in
1921	ifDescr, the association between the IP address and IfIndex remains
1922	and SNMP functions such as Interface_Scan_Next will report that
1923	association.
1924	
1925	10. Promiscuous mode
1926	====================
1927	
1928		When running network monitoring tools, e.g., tcpdump, it is
1929	common to enable promiscuous mode on the device, so that all traffic
1930	is seen (instead of seeing only traffic destined for the local host).
1931	The bonding driver handles promiscuous mode changes to the bonding
1932	master device (e.g., bond0), and propagates the setting to the slave
1933	devices.
1934	
1935		For the balance-rr, balance-xor, broadcast, and 802.3ad modes,
1936	the promiscuous mode setting is propagated to all slaves.
1937	
1938		For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, the
1939	promiscuous mode setting is propagated only to the active slave.
1940	
1941		For balance-tlb mode, the active slave is the slave currently
1942	receiving inbound traffic.
1943	
1944		For balance-alb mode, the active slave is the slave used as a
1945	"primary."  This slave is used for mode-specific control traffic, for
1946	sending to peers that are unassigned or if the load is unbalanced.
1947	
1948		For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, when
1949	the active slave changes (e.g., due to a link failure), the
1950	promiscuous setting will be propagated to the new active slave.
1951	
1952	11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability
1953	=============================================
1954	
1955		High Availability refers to configurations that provide
1956	maximum network availability by having redundant or backup devices,
1957	links or switches between the host and the rest of the world.  The
1958	goal is to provide the maximum availability of network connectivity
1959	(i.e., the network always works), even though other configurations
1960	could provide higher throughput.
1961	
1962	11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology
1963	--------------------------------------------------
1964	
1965		If two hosts (or a host and a single switch) are directly
1966	connected via multiple physical links, then there is no availability
1967	penalty to optimizing for maximum bandwidth.  In this case, there is
1968	only one switch (or peer), so if it fails, there is no alternative
1969	access to fail over to.  Additionally, the bonding load balance modes
1970	support link monitoring of their members, so if individual links fail,
1971	the load will be rebalanced across the remaining devices.
1972	
1973		See Section 12, "Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput"
1974	for information on configuring bonding with one peer device.
1975	
1976	11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology
1977	----------------------------------------------------
1978	
1979		With multiple switches, the configuration of bonding and the
1980	network changes dramatically.  In multiple switch topologies, there is
1981	a trade off between network availability and usable bandwidth.
1982	
1983		Below is a sample network, configured to maximize the
1984	availability of the network:
1985	
1986	                |                                     |
1987	                |port3                           port3|
1988	          +-----+----+                          +-----+----+
1989	          |          |port2       ISL      port2|          |
1990	          | switch A +--------------------------+ switch B |
1991	          |          |                          |          |
1992	          +-----+----+                          +-----++---+
1993	                |port1                           port1|
1994	                |             +-------+               |
1995	                +-------------+ host1 +---------------+
1996	                         eth0 +-------+ eth1
1997	
1998		In this configuration, there is a link between the two
1999	switches (ISL, or inter switch link), and multiple ports connecting to
2000	the outside world ("port3" on each switch).  There is no technical
2001	reason that this could not be extended to a third switch.
2002	
2003	11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2004	-------------------------------------------------------------
2005	
2006		In a topology such as the example above, the active-backup and
2007	broadcast modes are the only useful bonding modes when optimizing for
2008	availability; the other modes require all links to terminate on the
2009	same peer for them to behave rationally.
2010	
2011	active-backup: This is generally the preferred mode, particularly if
2012		the switches have an ISL and play together well.  If the
2013		network configuration is such that one switch is specifically
2014		a backup switch (e.g., has lower capacity, higher cost, etc),
2015		then the primary option can be used to insure that the
2016		preferred link is always used when it is available.
2017	
2018	broadcast: This mode is really a special purpose mode, and is suitable
2019		only for very specific needs.  For example, if the two
2020		switches are not connected (no ISL), and the networks beyond
2021		them are totally independent.  In this case, if it is
2022		necessary for some specific one-way traffic to reach both
2023		independent networks, then the broadcast mode may be suitable.
2024	
2025	11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2026	----------------------------------------------------------------
2027	
2028		The choice of link monitoring ultimately depends upon your
2029	switch.  If the switch can reliably fail ports in response to other
2030	failures, then either the MII or ARP monitors should work.  For
2031	example, in the above example, if the "port3" link fails at the remote
2032	end, the MII monitor has no direct means to detect this.  The ARP
2033	monitor could be configured with a target at the remote end of port3,
2034	thus detecting that failure without switch support.
2035	
2036		In general, however, in a multiple switch topology, the ARP
2037	monitor can provide a higher level of reliability in detecting end to
2038	end connectivity failures (which may be caused by the failure of any
2039	individual component to pass traffic for any reason).  Additionally,
2040	the ARP monitor should be configured with multiple targets (at least
2041	one for each switch in the network).  This will insure that,
2042	regardless of which switch is active, the ARP monitor has a suitable
2043	target to query.
2044	
2045		Note, also, that of late many switches now support a functionality
2046	generally referred to as "trunk failover."  This is a feature of the
2047	switch that causes the link state of a particular switch port to be set
2048	down (or up) when the state of another switch port goes down (or up).
2049	Its purpose is to propagate link failures from logically "exterior" ports
2050	to the logically "interior" ports that bonding is able to monitor via
2051	miimon.  Availability and configuration for trunk failover varies by
2052	switch, but this can be a viable alternative to the ARP monitor when using
2053	suitable switches.
2054	
2055	12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput
2056	==============================================
2057	
2058	12.1 Maximizing Throughput in a Single Switch Topology
2059	------------------------------------------------------
2060	
2061		In a single switch configuration, the best method to maximize
2062	throughput depends upon the application and network environment.  The
2063	various load balancing modes each have strengths and weaknesses in
2064	different environments, as detailed below.
2065	
2066		For this discussion, we will break down the topologies into
2067	two categories.  Depending upon the destination of most traffic, we
2068	categorize them into either "gatewayed" or "local" configurations.
2069	
2070		In a gatewayed configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily
2071	as a router, and the majority of traffic passes through this router to
2072	other networks.  An example would be the following:
2073	
2074	
2075	     +----------+                     +----------+
2076	     |          |eth0            port1|          | to other networks
2077	     | Host A   +---------------------+ router   +------------------->
2078	     |          +---------------------+          | Hosts B and C are out
2079	     |          |eth1            port2|          | here somewhere
2080	     +----------+                     +----------+
2081	
2082		The router may be a dedicated router device, or another host
2083	acting as a gateway.  For our discussion, the important point is that
2084	the majority of traffic from Host A will pass through the router to
2085	some other network before reaching its final destination.
2086	
2087		In a gatewayed network configuration, although Host A may
2088	communicate with many other systems, all of its traffic will be sent
2089	and received via one other peer on the local network, the router.
2090	
2091		Note that the case of two systems connected directly via
2092	multiple physical links is, for purposes of configuring bonding, the
2093	same as a gatewayed configuration.  In that case, it happens that all
2094	traffic is destined for the "gateway" itself, not some other network
2095	beyond the gateway.
2096	
2097		In a local configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily as
2098	a switch, and the majority of traffic passes through this switch to
2099	reach other stations on the same network.  An example would be the
2100	following:
2101	
2102	    +----------+            +----------+       +--------+
2103	    |          |eth0   port1|          +-------+ Host B |
2104	    |  Host A  +------------+  switch  |port3  +--------+
2105	    |          +------------+          |                  +--------+
2106	    |          |eth1   port2|          +------------------+ Host C |
2107	    +----------+            +----------+port4             +--------+
2108	
2109	
2110		Again, the switch may be a dedicated switch device, or another
2111	host acting as a gateway.  For our discussion, the important point is
2112	that the majority of traffic from Host A is destined for other hosts
2113	on the same local network (Hosts B and C in the above example).
2114	
2115		In summary, in a gatewayed configuration, traffic to and from
2116	the bonded device will be to the same MAC level peer on the network
2117	(the gateway itself, i.e., the router), regardless of its final
2118	destination.  In a local configuration, traffic flows directly to and
2119	from the final destinations, thus, each destination (Host B, Host C)
2120	will be addressed directly by their individual MAC addresses.
2121	
2122		This distinction between a gatewayed and a local network
2123	configuration is important because many of the load balancing modes
2124	available use the MAC addresses of the local network source and
2125	destination to make load balancing decisions.  The behavior of each
2126	mode is described below.
2127	
2128	
2129	12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology
2130	-----------------------------------------------------------
2131	
2132		This configuration is the easiest to set up and to understand,
2133	although you will have to decide which bonding mode best suits your
2134	needs.  The trade offs for each mode are detailed below:
2135	
2136	balance-rr: This mode is the only mode that will permit a single
2137		TCP/IP connection to stripe traffic across multiple
2138		interfaces. It is therefore the only mode that will allow a
2139		single TCP/IP stream to utilize more than one interface's
2140		worth of throughput.  This comes at a cost, however: the
2141		striping generally results in peer systems receiving packets out
2142		of order, causing TCP/IP's congestion control system to kick
2143		in, often by retransmitting segments.
2144	
2145		It is possible to adjust TCP/IP's congestion limits by
2146		altering the net.ipv4.tcp_reordering sysctl parameter.  The
2147		usual default value is 3, and the maximum useful value is 127.
2148		For a four interface balance-rr bond, expect that a single
2149		TCP/IP stream will utilize no more than approximately 2.3
2150		interface's worth of throughput, even after adjusting
2151		tcp_reordering.
2152	
2153		Note that the fraction of packets that will be delivered out of
2154		order is highly variable, and is unlikely to be zero.  The level
2155		of reordering depends upon a variety of factors, including the
2156		networking interfaces, the switch, and the topology of the
2157		configuration.  Speaking in general terms, higher speed network
2158		cards produce more reordering (due to factors such as packet
2159		coalescing), and a "many to many" topology will reorder at a
2160		higher rate than a "many slow to one fast" configuration.
2161	
2162		Many switches do not support any modes that stripe traffic
2163		(instead choosing a port based upon IP or MAC level addresses);
2164		for those devices, traffic for a particular connection flowing
2165		through the switch to a balance-rr bond will not utilize greater
2166		than one interface's worth of bandwidth.
2167	
2168		If you are utilizing protocols other than TCP/IP, UDP for
2169		example, and your application can tolerate out of order
2170		delivery, then this mode can allow for single stream datagram
2171		performance that scales near linearly as interfaces are added
2172		to the bond.
2173	
2174		This mode requires the switch to have the appropriate ports
2175		configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking."
2176	
2177	active-backup: There is not much advantage in this network topology to
2178		the active-backup mode, as the inactive backup devices are all
2179		connected to the same peer as the primary.  In this case, a
2180		load balancing mode (with link monitoring) will provide the
2181		same level of network availability, but with increased
2182		available bandwidth.  On the plus side, active-backup mode
2183		does not require any configuration of the switch, so it may
2184		have value if the hardware available does not support any of
2185		the load balance modes.
2186	
2187	balance-xor: This mode will limit traffic such that packets destined
2188		for specific peers will always be sent over the same
2189		interface.  Since the destination is determined by the MAC
2190		addresses involved, this mode works best in a "local" network
2191		configuration (as described above), with destinations all on
2192		the same local network.  This mode is likely to be suboptimal
2193		if all your traffic is passed through a single router (i.e., a
2194		"gatewayed" network configuration, as described above).
2195	
2196		As with balance-rr, the switch ports need to be configured for
2197		"etherchannel" or "trunking."
2198	
2199	broadcast: Like active-backup, there is not much advantage to this
2200		mode in this type of network topology.
2201	
2202	802.3ad: This mode can be a good choice for this type of network
2203		topology.  The 802.3ad mode is an IEEE standard, so all peers
2204		that implement 802.3ad should interoperate well.  The 802.3ad
2205		protocol includes automatic configuration of the aggregates,
2206		so minimal manual configuration of the switch is needed
2207		(typically only to designate that some set of devices is
2208		available for 802.3ad).  The 802.3ad standard also mandates
2209		that frames be delivered in order (within certain limits), so
2210		in general single connections will not see misordering of
2211		packets.  The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the
2212		standard mandates that all devices in the aggregate operate at
2213		the same speed and duplex.  Also, as with all bonding load
2214		balance modes other than balance-rr, no single connection will
2215		be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of
2216		bandwidth.  
2217	
2218		Additionally, the linux bonding 802.3ad implementation
2219		distributes traffic by peer (using an XOR of MAC addresses),
2220		so in a "gatewayed" configuration, all outgoing traffic will
2221		generally use the same device.  Incoming traffic may also end
2222		up on a single device, but that is dependent upon the
2223		balancing policy of the peer's 8023.ad implementation.  In a
2224		"local" configuration, traffic will be distributed across the
2225		devices in the bond.
2226	
2227		Finally, the 802.3ad mode mandates the use of the MII monitor,
2228		therefore, the ARP monitor is not available in this mode.
2229	
2230	balance-tlb: The balance-tlb mode balances outgoing traffic by peer.
2231		Since the balancing is done according to MAC address, in a
2232		"gatewayed" configuration (as described above), this mode will
2233		send all traffic across a single device.  However, in a
2234		"local" network configuration, this mode balances multiple
2235		local network peers across devices in a vaguely intelligent
2236		manner (not a simple XOR as in balance-xor or 802.3ad mode),
2237		so that mathematically unlucky MAC addresses (i.e., ones that
2238		XOR to the same value) will not all "bunch up" on a single
2239		interface.
2240	
2241		Unlike 802.3ad, interfaces may be of differing speeds, and no
2242		special switch configuration is required.  On the down side,
2243		in this mode all incoming traffic arrives over a single
2244		interface, this mode requires certain ethtool support in the
2245		network device driver of the slave interfaces, and the ARP
2246		monitor is not available.
2247	
2248	balance-alb: This mode is everything that balance-tlb is, and more.
2249		It has all of the features (and restrictions) of balance-tlb,
2250		and will also balance incoming traffic from local network
2251		peers (as described in the Bonding Module Options section,
2252		above).
2253	
2254		The only additional down side to this mode is that the network
2255		device driver must support changing the hardware address while
2256		the device is open.
2257	
2258	12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology
2259	----------------------------------------------------
2260	
2261		The choice of link monitoring may largely depend upon which
2262	mode you choose to use.  The more advanced load balancing modes do not
2263	support the use of the ARP monitor, and are thus restricted to using
2264	the MII monitor (which does not provide as high a level of end to end
2265	assurance as the ARP monitor).
2266	
2267	12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology
2268	-----------------------------------------------------
2269	
2270		Multiple switches may be utilized to optimize for throughput
2271	when they are configured in parallel as part of an isolated network
2272	between two or more systems, for example:
2273	
2274	                       +-----------+
2275	                       |  Host A   | 
2276	                       +-+---+---+-+
2277	                         |   |   |
2278	                +--------+   |   +---------+
2279	                |            |             |
2280	         +------+---+  +-----+----+  +-----+----+
2281	         | Switch A |  | Switch B |  | Switch C |
2282	         +------+---+  +-----+----+  +-----+----+
2283	                |            |             |
2284	                +--------+   |   +---------+
2285	                         |   |   |
2286	                       +-+---+---+-+
2287	                       |  Host B   | 
2288	                       +-----------+
2289	
2290		In this configuration, the switches are isolated from one
2291	another.  One reason to employ a topology such as this is for an
2292	isolated network with many hosts (a cluster configured for high
2293	performance, for example), using multiple smaller switches can be more
2294	cost effective than a single larger switch, e.g., on a network with 24
2295	hosts, three 24 port switches can be significantly less expensive than
2296	a single 72 port switch.
2297	
2298		If access beyond the network is required, an individual host
2299	can be equipped with an additional network device connected to an
2300	external network; this host then additionally acts as a gateway.
2301	
2302	12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2303	-------------------------------------------------------------
2304	
2305		In actual practice, the bonding mode typically employed in
2306	configurations of this type is balance-rr.  Historically, in this
2307	network configuration, the usual caveats about out of order packet
2308	delivery are mitigated by the use of network adapters that do not do
2309	any kind of packet coalescing (via the use of NAPI, or because the
2310	device itself does not generate interrupts until some number of
2311	packets has arrived).  When employed in this fashion, the balance-rr
2312	mode allows individual connections between two hosts to effectively
2313	utilize greater than one interface's bandwidth.
2314	
2315	12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
2316	------------------------------------------------------
2317	
2318		Again, in actual practice, the MII monitor is most often used
2319	in this configuration, as performance is given preference over
2320	availability.  The ARP monitor will function in this topology, but its
2321	advantages over the MII monitor are mitigated by the volume of probes
2322	needed as the number of systems involved grows (remember that each
2323	host in the network is configured with bonding).
2324	
2325	13. Switch Behavior Issues
2326	==========================
2327	
2328	13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays
2329	-------------------------------------------
2330	
2331		Some switches exhibit undesirable behavior with regard to the
2332	timing of link up and down reporting by the switch.
2333	
2334		First, when a link comes up, some switches may indicate that
2335	the link is up (carrier available), but not pass traffic over the
2336	interface for some period of time.  This delay is typically due to
2337	some type of autonegotiation or routing protocol, but may also occur
2338	during switch initialization (e.g., during recovery after a switch
2339	failure).  If you find this to be a problem, specify an appropriate
2340	value to the updelay bonding module option to delay the use of the
2341	relevant interface(s).
2342	
2343		Second, some switches may "bounce" the link state one or more
2344	times while a link is changing state.  This occurs most commonly while
2345	the switch is initializing.  Again, an appropriate updelay value may
2346	help.
2347	
2348		Note that when a bonding interface has no active links, the
2349	driver will immediately reuse the first link that goes up, even if the
2350	updelay parameter has been specified (the updelay is ignored in this
2351	case).  If there are slave interfaces waiting for the updelay timeout
2352	to expire, the interface that first went into that state will be
2353	immediately reused.  This reduces down time of the network if the
2354	value of updelay has been overestimated, and since this occurs only in
2355	cases with no connectivity, there is no additional penalty for
2356	ignoring the updelay.
2357	
2358		In addition to the concerns about switch timings, if your
2359	switches take a long time to go into backup mode, it may be desirable
2360	to not activate a backup interface immediately after a link goes down.
2361	Failover may be delayed via the downdelay bonding module option.
2362	
2363	13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets
2364	--------------------------------
2365	
2366		NOTE: Starting with version 3.0.2, the bonding driver has logic to
2367	suppress duplicate packets, which should largely eliminate this problem.
2368	The following description is kept for reference.
2369	
2370		It is not uncommon to observe a short burst of duplicated
2371	traffic when the bonding device is first used, or after it has been
2372	idle for some period of time.  This is most easily observed by issuing
2373	a "ping" to some other host on the network, and noticing that the
2374	output from ping flags duplicates (typically one per slave).
2375	
2376		For example, on a bond in active-backup mode with five slaves
2377	all connected to one switch, the output may appear as follows:
2378	
2379	# ping -n 10.0.4.2
2380	PING 10.0.4.2 (10.0.4.2) from 10.0.3.10 : 56(84) bytes of data.
2381	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.7 ms
2382	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2383	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2384	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2385	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2386	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.216 ms
2387	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.267 ms
2388	64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.222 ms
2389	
2390		This is not due to an error in the bonding driver, rather, it
2391	is a side effect of how many switches update their MAC forwarding
2392	tables.  Initially, the switch does not associate the MAC address in
2393	the packet with a particular switch port, and so it may send the
2394	traffic to all ports until its MAC forwarding table is updated.  Since
2395	the interfaces attached to the bond may occupy multiple ports on a
2396	single switch, when the switch (temporarily) floods the traffic to all
2397	ports, the bond device receives multiple copies of the same packet
2398	(one per slave device).
2399	
2400		The duplicated packet behavior is switch dependent, some
2401	switches exhibit this, and some do not.  On switches that display this
2402	behavior, it can be induced by clearing the MAC forwarding table (on
2403	most Cisco switches, the privileged command "clear mac address-table
2404	dynamic" will accomplish this).
2405	
2406	14. Hardware Specific Considerations
2407	====================================
2408	
2409		This section contains additional information for configuring
2410	bonding on specific hardware platforms, or for interfacing bonding
2411	with particular switches or other devices.
2412	
2413	14.1 IBM BladeCenter
2414	--------------------
2415	
2416		This applies to the JS20 and similar systems.
2417	
2418		On the JS20 blades, the bonding driver supports only
2419	balance-rr, active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes.  This is
2420	largely due to the network topology inside the BladeCenter, detailed
2421	below.
2422	
2423	JS20 network adapter information
2424	--------------------------------
2425	
2426		All JS20s come with two Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports
2427	integrated on the planar (that's "motherboard" in IBM-speak).  In the
2428	BladeCenter chassis, the eth0 port of all JS20 blades is hard wired to
2429	I/O Module #1; similarly, all eth1 ports are wired to I/O Module #2.
2430	An add-on Broadcom daughter card can be installed on a JS20 to provide
2431	two more Gigabit Ethernet ports.  These ports, eth2 and eth3, are
2432	wired to I/O Modules 3 and 4, respectively.
2433	
2434		Each I/O Module may contain either a switch or a passthrough
2435	module (which allows ports to be directly connected to an external
2436	switch).  Some bonding modes require a specific BladeCenter internal
2437	network topology in order to function; these are detailed below.
2438	
2439		Additional BladeCenter-specific networking information can be
2440	found in two IBM Redbooks (www.ibm.com/redbooks):
2441	
2442	"IBM eServer BladeCenter Networking Options"
2443	"IBM eServer BladeCenter Layer 2-7 Network Switching"
2444	
2445	BladeCenter networking configuration
2446	------------------------------------
2447	
2448		Because a BladeCenter can be configured in a very large number
2449	of ways, this discussion will be confined to describing basic
2450	configurations.
2451	
2452		Normally, Ethernet Switch Modules (ESMs) are used in I/O
2453	modules 1 and 2.  In this configuration, the eth0 and eth1 ports of a
2454	JS20 will be connected to different internal switches (in the
2455	respective I/O modules).
2456	
2457		A passthrough module (OPM or CPM, optical or copper,
2458	passthrough module) connects the I/O module directly to an external
2459	switch.  By using PMs in I/O module #1 and #2, the eth0 and eth1
2460	interfaces of a JS20 can be redirected to the outside world and
2461	connected to a common external switch.
2462	
2463		Depending upon the mix of ESMs and PMs, the network will
2464	appear to bonding as either a single switch topology (all PMs) or as a
2465	multiple switch topology (one or more ESMs, zero or more PMs).  It is
2466	also possible to connect ESMs together, resulting in a configuration
2467	much like the example in "High Availability in a Multiple Switch
2468	Topology," above.
2469	
2470	Requirements for specific modes
2471	-------------------------------
2472	
2473		The balance-rr mode requires the use of passthrough modules
2474	for devices in the bond, all connected to an common external switch.
2475	That switch must be configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking" on the
2476	appropriate ports, as is usual for balance-rr.
2477	
2478		The balance-alb and balance-tlb modes will function with
2479	either switch modules or passthrough modules (or a mix).  The only
2480	specific requirement for these modes is that all network interfaces
2481	must be able to reach all destinations for traffic sent over the
2482	bonding device (i.e., the network must converge at some point outside
2483	the BladeCenter).
2484	
2485		The active-backup mode has no additional requirements.
2486	
2487	Link monitoring issues
2488	----------------------
2489	
2490		When an Ethernet Switch Module is in place, only the ARP
2491	monitor will reliably detect link loss to an external switch.  This is
2492	nothing unusual, but examination of the BladeCenter cabinet would
2493	suggest that the "external" network ports are the ethernet ports for
2494	the system, when it fact there is a switch between these "external"
2495	ports and the devices on the JS20 system itself.  The MII monitor is
2496	only able to detect link failures between the ESM and the JS20 system.
2497	
2498		When a passthrough module is in place, the MII monitor does
2499	detect failures to the "external" port, which is then directly
2500	connected to the JS20 system.
2501	
2502	Other concerns
2503	--------------
2504	
2505		The Serial Over LAN (SoL) link is established over the primary
2506	ethernet (eth0) only, therefore, any loss of link to eth0 will result
2507	in losing your SoL connection.  It will not fail over with other
2508	network traffic, as the SoL system is beyond the control of the
2509	bonding driver.
2510	
2511		It may be desirable to disable spanning tree on the switch
2512	(either the internal Ethernet Switch Module, or an external switch) to
2513	avoid fail-over delay issues when using bonding.
2514	
2515		
2516	15. Frequently Asked Questions
2517	==============================
2518	
2519	1.  Is it SMP safe?
2520	
2521		Yes. The old 2.0.xx channel bonding patch was not SMP safe.
2522	The new driver was designed to be SMP safe from the start.
2523	
2524	2.  What type of cards will work with it?
2525	
2526		Any Ethernet type cards (you can even mix cards - a Intel
2527	EtherExpress PRO/100 and a 3com 3c905b, for example).  For most modes,
2528	devices need not be of the same speed.
2529	
2530		Starting with version 3.2.1, bonding also supports Infiniband
2531	slaves in active-backup mode.
2532	
2533	3.  How many bonding devices can I have?
2534	
2535		There is no limit.
2536	
2537	4.  How many slaves can a bonding device have?
2538	
2539		This is limited only by the number of network interfaces Linux
2540	supports and/or the number of network cards you can place in your
2541	system.
2542	
2543	5.  What happens when a slave link dies?
2544	
2545		If link monitoring is enabled, then the failing device will be
2546	disabled.  The active-backup mode will fail over to a backup link, and
2547	other modes will ignore the failed link.  The link will continue to be
2548	monitored, and should it recover, it will rejoin the bond (in whatever
2549	manner is appropriate for the mode). See the sections on High
2550	Availability and the documentation for each mode for additional
2551	information.
2552		
2553		Link monitoring can be enabled via either the miimon or
2554	arp_interval parameters (described in the module parameters section,
2555	above).  In general, miimon monitors the carrier state as sensed by
2556	the underlying network device, and the arp monitor (arp_interval)
2557	monitors connectivity to another host on the local network.
2558	
2559		If no link monitoring is configured, the bonding driver will
2560	be unable to detect link failures, and will assume that all links are
2561	always available.  This will likely result in lost packets, and a
2562	resulting degradation of performance.  The precise performance loss
2563	depends upon the bonding mode and network configuration.
2564	
2565	6.  Can bonding be used for High Availability?
2566	
2567		Yes.  See the section on High Availability for details.
2568	
2569	7.  Which switches/systems does it work with?
2570	
2571		The full answer to this depends upon the desired mode.
2572	
2573		In the basic balance modes (balance-rr and balance-xor), it
2574	works with any system that supports etherchannel (also called
2575	trunking).  Most managed switches currently available have such
2576	support, and many unmanaged switches as well.
2577	
2578		The advanced balance modes (balance-tlb and balance-alb) do
2579	not have special switch requirements, but do need device drivers that
2580	support specific features (described in the appropriate section under
2581	module parameters, above).
2582	
2583		In 802.3ad mode, it works with systems that support IEEE
2584	802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation.  Most managed and many unmanaged
2585	switches currently available support 802.3ad.
2586	
2587	        The active-backup mode should work with any Layer-II switch.
2588	
2589	8.  Where does a bonding device get its MAC address from?
2590	
2591		When using slave devices that have fixed MAC addresses, or when
2592	the fail_over_mac option is enabled, the bonding device's MAC address is
2593	the MAC address of the active slave.
2594	
2595		For other configurations, if not explicitly configured (with
2596	ifconfig or ip link), the MAC address of the bonding device is taken from
2597	its first slave device.  This MAC address is then passed to all following
2598	slaves and remains persistent (even if the first slave is removed) until
2599	the bonding device is brought down or reconfigured.
2600	
2601		If you wish to change the MAC address, you can set it with
2602	ifconfig or ip link:
2603	
2604	# ifconfig bond0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
2605	
2606	# ip link set bond0 address 66:77:88:99:aa:bb
2607	
2608		The MAC address can be also changed by bringing down/up the
2609	device and then changing its slaves (or their order):
2610	
2611	# ifconfig bond0 down ; modprobe -r bonding
2612	# ifconfig bond0 .... up
2613	# ifenslave bond0 eth...
2614	
2615		This method will automatically take the address from the next
2616	slave that is added.
2617	
2618		To restore your slaves' MAC addresses, you need to detach them
2619	from the bond (`ifenslave -d bond0 eth0'). The bonding driver will
2620	then restore the MAC addresses that the slaves had before they were
2621	enslaved.
2622	
2623	16. Resources and Links
2624	=======================
2625	
2626		The latest version of the bonding driver can be found in the latest
2627	version of the linux kernel, found on http://kernel.org
2628	
2629		The latest version of this document can be found in the latest kernel
2630	source (named Documentation/networking/bonding.txt).
2631	
2632		Discussions regarding the usage of the bonding driver take place on the
2633	bonding-devel mailing list, hosted at sourceforge.net. If you have questions or
2634	problems, post them to the list.  The list address is:
2635	
2636	bonding-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
2637	
2638		The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can
2639	be found at:
2640	
2641	https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bonding-devel
2642	
2643		Discussions regarding the development of the bonding driver take place
2644	on the main Linux network mailing list, hosted at vger.kernel.org. The list
2645	address is:
2646	
2647	netdev@vger.kernel.org
2648	
2649		The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can
2650	be found at:
2651	
2652	http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#netdev
2653	
2654	Donald Becker's Ethernet Drivers and diag programs may be found at :
2655	 - http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.scyld.com/network/ 
2656	
2657	You will also find a lot of information regarding Ethernet, NWay, MII,
2658	etc. at www.scyld.com.
2659	
2660	-- END --
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