Dual Nics

[M. Hamzah Khan]

On Mon, 2011-07-25 at 12:17 -0400, Overkill wrote:
> Has anyone noticed that even if you use two network cards that only one 
> nic is really doing all the traffic.  I noticed this with many different 
> types of network cards and nics.  I even setup snmp monitoring, cacti, 
> etc and noticed that both IP's and one interface is doing all the work.  
> Even setup bonding and still does the same thing.

Both interfaces won't be used.

Packets will travel out of which ever interface has a route to their
destination.

If both interfaces have the same route, then it'll use the route with
the lower metric.

With bonding, it depends on the mode you are using.

If you are using 802.3ad, then from what I understand (someone correct
me if I'm wrong here!), you won't get the speed of both interfaces (ie,
2x gigabit ports bonded together won't mean you can transfer a single
file at 2 gigabits/s) but rather you can have two separate transfers
that together are going at 2 gigabits/s.

> Is this a driver issue or am I simply not using enterprise hardware?
> 
> -Overkill