Is it worth using both gigabit ether ports?

[Tillman Hodgson]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 03:11:55PM +0100, Andy Holyer wrote:
> I work for a small special-purpose ISP, and right now I'm configuring 
> our main Web/Mail/DNS server. It's a Dell Poweredge 750, 2.4Gb with 
> 1Gig of memory and twp 80 GB drives mirrored using vinum.
> 
> When I've prepped it up, it's due to go in our rack at Telecity in 
> Docklands.
> 
> The box came with an Intel twin Gigabit network card, and I'd like to 
> use ng_one2many to load share so that the box uses both ports at once.
> 
> There doesn't appear to be much about this on the web. My question: is 
> it worth doing? Will a get a better and/or more fault-tolerent 
> performance by doing this? Do I have to do anything clever with DNS or 
> the router (a Cisco 3660) to get requests evenly distributed, or can I 
> rely on sharing outgoing traffic?

I'll reply to just the fault-tolerant question:

You'll get less fault-tolerance, as ng_one2many doesn't implement any
kind of connection checking. If an interface dies, 1/2 of your packets
will still attempt to use it.

-T


-- 
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