
45 days old...we been busy.......ok

(from pclos 2007)
Here is the how to that I've kept from the GREAT user who posted it, since I don't know ?
How to or even too update this for PCLOS 2010 kde. Or if needed...
Most modern motherboards have two (mabye more?) ethernet ports. ( or usb ports ) If you access the internet
or other devices via a home network - for the price of a cable you can add some functionality
to your connection.
AS WITH ALL EXPERIMENTS: Backup the files used in this tip - no point in needless headaches
if this doesn't work for you!
This short HOWTO will tell you how to 'bond' two (or more) physical ethernet interfaces
together to look and act as a single interface under Linux. It was originally written for
Mandrake Linux users but it has also been tested on recent versions of Mandriva Linux and
I adapted it to our PCLinuxOS. ( But not for PCLOS 2010 kde )
In /etc/modprobe.conf, you should have something similar to the following:
alias eth0 sky2
alias eth1 sky2
Add these lines as well:
alias bond0 bonding
alias bond1 bonding
options bond0 max_bonds=2 miimon=100 mode=0
options bond1 miimon=100 mode=0
(more on "mode" below)
In /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ you should have these two files:
ifcfg-eth0
ifcfg-eth1
In /etc/modprobe.preload add this line:
bonding
Edit them so they look like this:
DEVICE=eth0 # or eth1 for ifcfg-eth1
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
The bond0 file contains the actual IP address information,
so create a new file here called ifcfg-bond0 that contains:
DEVICE=bond0
IPADDR=192.168.1.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=no
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
Use the correct information for your network connection. IMO the easiest way
to create this file correctly is to copy your original ifcfg-eth0
(or eth1 if you connect through that interface) and name it ifcfg-bond0 then do the edits above.
To use your new bonded interface right now - enter "modprobe bonding" and
"service network restart" in a console as root. This should present you with a new 'bond0'
interface. This is the interface you should see traffic going in and out of if you were to
tcp dump the interface.
You will also notice typing "ifconfig" that all of the ethX interfaces are up,
but only bond0 has an IP address and they all have the same MAC address.
Bonding automatically assigns the primary ethernet port MAC adress to all interfaces.
This example assumes you have two interfaces and want to use them in a 'round-robin' setup.
Here are the available modes:
Mode 0: Round Robin. Transmissions are load balanced by sending from available interfaces
sequentially packet by packet. Transmissions only are load balanced.
Provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
Mode 1: Active-Backup. This is the simplest mode of operation for bonding.
Only one Ethernet slave is active at any one time. When the active connection fails
another slave is chosen to take over as the active slave and the MAC address is transferred
to that connection. The switch will effectively view this the same as if the host was disconnected
from one port and then connected to another port. This mode provides fault tolerance but does not
provide any increase in performance.
Mode 2: Balanced XOR. This is a simple form of load balancing using the XOR of the MAC
addresses of the host and the destination. It works in general fairly well but always sends
the packets through the same channel when sending to the same destination. This means that it
is relatively effective when communicating with a large number of different remote hosts but
loses effectiveness as the number decreases becoming worthless as the value becomes one.
This mode provides fault tolerance and some load balancing.
Mode 3: Broadcast. This mode simply uses all channels to mirror all transmissions.
It does not provide any load balancing but is for fault tolerance only.
Mode 4: IEEE 803.ad Dynamic Link Aggregation. This mode provides fault tolerance as well
as load balancing. It is highly effective but requires configuration changes on the switch and
the switch must support 802.3ad Link Aggregation.
Mode 5: Adaptive Transmit Load Balancing. This mode provides fault tolerance and transmit
(out going) load balancing. It provides no receiving load balancing. This mode does not
require any configuration on the switch. Ethtool support is required in the network adapter
(NIC) driver.
Mode 6: Adaptive Load Balancing. Like mode five but provides fault tolerance and
bidirectional load balancing. The transmit load balancing is identical but receipt load
balancing is accomplished by ARP trickery.