What is Bonding (link aggregation)?

 

Network bonding is the process of combining or joining two or more network interfaces (NIC)/network ports  together into a single interface. Network bonding offers performance improvements and redundancy by increasing the network throughput and bandwidth. Is one interface down or broken etc. the other one cover this failure.

The Bond function can be used on the 1G and 10G network ports.

There are different types, below is a summary table (these are supported from the PegasusPro R8/R16 series):

Mode

Policy

How it works

Fault Tolerance

Load balancing

0

Round Robin

packets are sequentially transmitted/received through each interfaces one by one.

Yes

Yes

1

Active Backup

one  active network port while another network port is asleep. If the active network port goes down, another network port becomes active. only supported in x86 environments.

Yes

No

2

XOR [exclusive OR]

In this mode the, the MAC address of the slave network port is matched up against the incoming request’s MAC and once this connection is established same network port is used to transmit/receive for the destination MAC.

Yes

Yes

3

Broadcast

All transmissions are sent on all slaves

Yes

No

4

Dynamic Link Aggregation

aggregated network ports act as one network port which results in a higher throughput, but also provides failover in the case that a network port fails. Dynamic Link Aggregation requires a switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad.

Yes

Yes

5

Transmit Load Balancing (TLB)

The outgoing traffic is distributed depending on the current load on each slave interface. Incoming traffic is received by the current slave. If the receiving slave fails, another slave takes over the MAC address of the failed slave.

Yes

Yes

6

Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB)

Unlike Dynamic Link Aggregation, Adaptive Load Balancing does not require any particular switch configuration. Adaptive Load Balancing is only supported in x86 environments. The receiving packets are load balanced through ARP negotiation.

Yes

Yes

 

To set up a Bond on the Pegasus Pro R8/R16 you need to log in to the GUI via your preferred Browser.

 

You can follow up the steps that you can see here:

 

 

To combine the Network ports on MAC OS, please follow these steps:

https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/mac-help/mchlp2798/mac

For Windows Server, please take a look here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/nic-teaming/create-a-new-nic-team-on-a-host-computer-or-vm


Demo configuration how it looks in real.
In this setup the following components are used:


MAC Book Pro + SANLink + PegasusPro R8 (Link Aggregation Control Protocol [LACP])





Note:

If you need a powerful Network Adaptor for MAC/Windows, you can take a look at our SANLIink 3-N1 with 1, 2.5, 5, or 10Gb/s transfer speed.

Here you can find some specs:

https://www.promise.com/Products/SANLink/SANLink3-N1