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Link Aggregation Question(s)

R

Ramaddil

n00b
Joined
Mar 30, 2009
Messages
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So I am working on moving to a managed switch with LACP and getting a quad port NIC for my server and dual port for my secondary pc. Before you ask why just know this is what I intend to do. My issue is that in my server I have a open port for a quad nic with no issues. My problem is that my main or secondary pc has no open slot. I have a on board gigabit nic but no open slots except for a 1x slot or usb 3.0 slots.

So my question is the following can a on board nic plus a USB or 1x slot intel nic work together?

and does each nic have to be compatible with 802.3ad/LACP? I have looked on many cards and dont see any mention of it.

Thanks
 
Should be possible if you use an OS with built in link aggregation support, such as Linux or various Unix flavors. Wikipedia says Windows Server 2012 and up can do this (while we now have some 2012 servers at my work, I have yet to set up the network stuff for any of them). Prior versions relied on the NIC drivers to support it, which had the major downside of most configurations (especially using different drivers) not being supported.

You do know that most protocols won't take advantage of this unless you use multiple streams, right? Though SMB 3.0 will, for one.
 
Here is my setup in a nutshell....

One Server, One Main PC both have Raid Arrays on them one with a Raid 6 (Server), Other with Raid 5. I am looking to increase the transfer speeds between them + I have several access points through out the house WD TV Media Players can play items from the server. Plus any traffic from a laptop or other device. Also I am able to stream data remotely to Idevices at home and away.

I am aware this is probably over the top but its what I want to do..... (need a project) plus it would be nice to future proof. Currently running windows 7 but I do have a copy of Server 2012.. My only other option I could do would be to upgrade my motherboard in my other PC which would give me enough ports to put a dual nic card in.

I am guessing any dual or quad port nic would support teaming ?
 
Are you stuck with LACP?

As was said before most Linux and Server 2012+ can to NIC teaming with basically any NICs. In Windows 7/8(.1) the Intel Drivers can team with other NICs, and some other vendors support it with their drivers too. Such as 2 Intel and 1 Broadcom. So it is possible.

However, there are other teaming technologies also. With Windows 8 (Server 2012) and above SMB 3.0 has multipathing and I find it to be even faster than using a team (even when the team take advantage of SMB 3.0). But Server 2012 (R2) can support teaming AND multipathing.

You have to remember that LACP is still limited to a single link speed for a single conversation (flow) where as other technologies like TCP Multipath, SMB 3.0, iSCSI Multipath will allow for more than a single links worth of bandwidth for a single flow.

Also LACP is not switch independent. So for redundancy purposes you'd need a switch stack or some other technology like vPC. But all of the other technologies can operate independent of the switch.

At home I use a mix of LACP and SMB 3.0 multipathing, because both have their place and SMB 3.0 by itself has been faster in my testing.

I have a file server with 4 NICs that uses just SMB 3.0, no team. I have a workstation that has 2 NICs, no team. Then I have two Hyper-V servers that have 4 NICs in a team.

The reason I've done this is to make the networking side of the Hyper-V servers, for the VMs, easy to manage while still getting some benefits of LACP and SMB 3.0 combined. The VM storage connection to the file server is going over SMB while the servers share the 4 ports LACP team...best of both worlds. The file server and the workstation are not using LACP because I found that its throughput was less when I used the team and they don't need a team to support the Hyper-V virtual networks.

If your objective is simply to get basic file sharing between computers to be faster then an LACP team will not help you at all unless you're transferring between multiple stations, but SMB 3.0 in Windows 8(.1) and Server 2012 (R2) will increase your throughput greatly.

Another flaw in LACP is the hashing algorithms, if you want to get a decent (close to) 50/50 split you really need switches and NICs that support layer 4 hashing (ports).

I should note:

1.2. Requirements

SMB Multichannel requires the following:

At least two computers running Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8.
At least one of the configurations below:

Multiple network adapters
One or more network adapters that support RSS (Receive Side Scaling)
One of more network adapters configured with NIC Teaming
One or more network adapters that support RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access)
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
So if I use LACP with two computers with both having multiple nics... Will I get increased speed between those pcs?
 
Jay_oasis said:
With multiple simultaneous transfers, yes.
Click to expand...

Only true if the LACP is doing layer 4 hashing. If it is doing the typical source/destination IP address then the hash will be identical and will use the same interface. You need Layer 4 ports to be included in the hash algorithm to even have a chance of using two interfaces for the two connections (or more).
 
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