[CentOS] SOLVED: Bonding and network cards

Wed Dec 3 21:44:37 UTC 2008
David Hrbáč <hrbac.conf at seznam.cz>

Ralph Angenendt napsal(a):
> That is strange. But you shouldn't be needing mii, use_carrier should be
> working with modern cards - if they come up at once.
> 
> I have bonding on 2 Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T where the
> card takes so long to come up that the bonding driver assumes the wrong
> link mode (100baseT instead of 1000baseT).
> 
> But those cards do work with miimon (which uses miitool and/or ethtool).
> 
> Cheers,

So finally got it working, r8169 is a piece of crap, at least at 2.6.18
kernel :o). Got e1000 cards (Intel PRO/1000 MT), working like a charm.
Seems to me that via-rhine is the very same as r8169.

Just for the record:
1. dhcp on bonding adapter with 802.3ad is not going to work, use static one
2. modes 5,6 work both static and dhpc
3. mode 5 works pretty well across multiple switch units
4. mode 6 does not
5. 802.3ad reacts the most slowly, you have to set lacp_rate=fast and
set switch LACP timeout to the lowest one.
6. mode 5 setting primary=eth0 - once eth0 is up, traffic goes to eth0
back, without primary remains on the last adapter to run
7. and do not forget to use ETHTOOLS_OPT="speed 1000" on physical adapters
8. test done against DLINK DGS-3110-24 (modes 5,6,802.3ad) and one
unmanaged switch (modes 5,6)
Regards,
David Hrbáč