[Linux-cluster] Small Cluster, Port Trunking, To use switch or not?

[Balagopal Pillai]

Hi,

For 802.3ad bonding mode, the switch needs to support lacp. Static 
trunking feature on the switch
is not enough. In your case with no switch support, mode 6 or adaptive 
load balancing is a good option.
Round robin is the only mode that will give you more than an interface 
worth of throughput on a single connection.
But that needs some switch support. (like cisco etherchannel for 
example) Also there is additional overhead
due to out of the order packets. The other modes will give better 
aggregate throughput.

Regards
Balagopal

           

Frankie Montenegro wrote:
> Thanks. That will be very usefull when I start putting things together.
>
> Did I understand this howto correctly: either way, switch or not, my
> network devices need to be complient with this 802.3ad protocol if I
> want to bond them.  RIght?
>
> Well that's a bummer: I can't use  the network cards on board of my
> "cheapo" motherboards, which means I have to buy 2 cards per node (
> and the cheapest card with support of this
> protocol was around 50$) . I guess I better forget about bonding then.
>
> F.
>
> On 9/7/07, Bob Marcan <bob.marcan at interstudio.homeunix.net> wrote:
>   
>> Frankie Montenegro wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> I am building a small HPC cluster with two slaves and a master. I can
>>> put together two slave nodes with under 350$ per node, so I don't want
>>> to spend more then 70-80$ for networking.
>>>
>>> Buying a gigabit ethernet 4 port switch would be the most
>>> straightforward solution. However, I was hoping to get "port trunking"
>>> set up,  and doubling the network speed. Since this is not supported
>>> by switches that are within my budget, I wondered if I can achieve
>>> port trunking without a switch, just
>>> adding couple of   network cards to the master node  and having a
>>> master node be a switch. WIll I be able to get 2Gbps or is this idea
>>> completely idiotic?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> F.
>>>
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>>>       
>> /usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-XXXXXXX/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt
>> Look for mode.
>>
>> Regards, Bob
>> --
>>   Bob Marcan, Consultant                mailto:bob.marcan at snt.si
>>   S&T Slovenija d.d.                    tel:   +386 (1) 5895-300
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>>     
>
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