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0001 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
0002 
0003 ===================================
0004 Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO
0005 ===================================
0006 
0007 Latest update: 27 April 2011
0008 
0009 Initial release: Thomas Davis <tadavis at lbl.gov>
0010 
0011 Corrections, HA extensions: 2000/10/03-15:
0012 
0013   - Willy Tarreau <willy at meta-x.org>
0014   - Constantine Gavrilov <const-g at xpert.com>
0015   - Chad N. Tindel <ctindel at ieee dot org>
0016   - Janice Girouard <girouard at us dot ibm dot com>
0017   - Jay Vosburgh <fubar at us dot ibm dot com>
0018 
0019 Reorganized and updated Feb 2005 by Jay Vosburgh
0020 Added Sysfs information: 2006/04/24
0021 
0022   - Mitch Williams <mitch.a.williams at intel.com>
0023 
0024 Introduction
0025 ============
0026 
0027 The Linux bonding driver provides a method for aggregating
0028 multiple network interfaces into a single logical "bonded" interface.
0029 The behavior of the bonded interfaces depends upon the mode; generally
0030 speaking, modes provide either hot standby or load balancing services.
0031 Additionally, link integrity monitoring may be performed.
0032 
0033 The bonding driver originally came from Donald Becker's
0034 beowulf patches for kernel 2.0. It has changed quite a bit since, and
0035 the original tools from extreme-linux and beowulf sites will not work
0036 with this version of the driver.
0037 
0038 For new versions of the driver, updated userspace tools, and
0039 who to ask for help, please follow the links at the end of this file.
0040 
0041 .. Table of Contents
0042 
0043    1. Bonding Driver Installation
0044 
0045    2. Bonding Driver Options
0046 
0047    3. Configuring Bonding Devices
0048    3.1  Configuration with Sysconfig Support
0049    3.1.1                Using DHCP with Sysconfig
0050    3.1.2                Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig
0051    3.2  Configuration with Initscripts Support
0052    3.2.1                Using DHCP with Initscripts
0053    3.2.2                Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts
0054    3.3  Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave
0055    3.3.1                Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually
0056    3.4  Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs
0057    3.5  Configuration with Interfaces Support
0058    3.6  Overriding Configuration for Special Cases
0059    3.7 Configuring LACP for 802.3ad mode in a more secure way
0060 
0061    4. Querying Bonding Configuration
0062    4.1  Bonding Configuration
0063    4.2  Network Configuration
0064 
0065    5. Switch Configuration
0066 
0067    6. 802.1q VLAN Support
0068 
0069    7. Link Monitoring
0070    7.1  ARP Monitor Operation
0071    7.2  Configuring Multiple ARP Targets
0072    7.3  MII Monitor Operation
0073 
0074    8. Potential Trouble Sources
0075    8.1  Adventures in Routing
0076    8.2  Ethernet Device Renaming
0077    8.3  Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon
0078 
0079    9. SNMP agents
0080 
0081    10. Promiscuous mode
0082 
0083    11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability
0084    11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology
0085    11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology
0086    11.2.1               HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
0087    11.2.2               HA Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
0088 
0089    12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput
0090    12.1 Maximum Throughput in a Single Switch Topology
0091    12.1.1               MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology
0092    12.1.2               MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology
0093    12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology
0094    12.2.1               MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
0095    12.2.2               MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
0096 
0097    13. Switch Behavior Issues
0098    13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays
0099    13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets
0100 
0101    14. Hardware Specific Considerations
0102    14.1 IBM BladeCenter
0103 
0104    15. Frequently Asked Questions
0105 
0106    16. Resources and Links
0107 
0108 
0109 1. Bonding Driver Installation
0110 ==============================
0111 
0112 Most popular distro kernels ship with the bonding driver
0113 already available as a module. If your distro does not, or you
0114 have need to compile bonding from source (e.g., configuring and
0115 installing a mainline kernel from kernel.org), you'll need to perform
0116 the following steps:
0117 
0118 1.1 Configure and build the kernel with bonding
0119 -----------------------------------------------
0120 
0121 The current version of the bonding driver is available in the
0122 drivers/net/bonding subdirectory of the most recent kernel source
0123 (which is available on http://kernel.org).  Most users "rolling their
0124 own" will want to use the most recent kernel from kernel.org.
0125 
0126 Configure kernel with "make menuconfig" (or "make xconfig" or
0127 "make config"), then select "Bonding driver support" in the "Network
0128 device support" section.  It is recommended that you configure the
0129 driver as module since it is currently the only way to pass parameters
0130 to the driver or configure more than one bonding device.
0131 
0132 Build and install the new kernel and modules.
0133 
0134 1.2 Bonding Control Utility
0135 ---------------------------
0136 
0137 It is recommended to configure bonding via iproute2 (netlink)
0138 or sysfs, the old ifenslave control utility is obsolete.
0139 
0140 2. Bonding Driver Options
0141 =========================
0142 
0143 Options for the bonding driver are supplied as parameters to the
0144 bonding module at load time, or are specified via sysfs.
0145 
0146 Module options may be given as command line arguments to the
0147 insmod or modprobe command, but are usually specified in either the
0148 ``/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf`` configuration files, or in a distro-specific
0149 configuration file (some of which are detailed in the next section).
0150 
0151 Details on bonding support for sysfs is provided in the
0152 "Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs" section, below.
0153 
0154 The available bonding driver parameters are listed below. If a
0155 parameter is not specified the default value is used.  When initially
0156 configuring a bond, it is recommended "tail -f /var/log/messages" be
0157 run in a separate window to watch for bonding driver error messages.
0158 
0159 It is critical that either the miimon or arp_interval and
0160 arp_ip_target parameters be specified, otherwise serious network
0161 degradation will occur during link failures.  Very few devices do not
0162 support at least miimon, so there is really no reason not to use it.
0163 
0164 Options with textual values will accept either the text name
0165 or, for backwards compatibility, the option value.  E.g.,
0166 "mode=802.3ad" and "mode=4" set the same mode.
0167 
0168 The parameters are as follows:
0169 
0170 active_slave
0171 
0172         Specifies the new active slave for modes that support it
0173         (active-backup, balance-alb and balance-tlb).  Possible values
0174         are the name of any currently enslaved interface, or an empty
0175         string.  If a name is given, the slave and its link must be up in order
0176         to be selected as the new active slave.  If an empty string is
0177         specified, the current active slave is cleared, and a new active
0178         slave is selected automatically.
0179 
0180         Note that this is only available through the sysfs interface. No module
0181         parameter by this name exists.
0182 
0183         The normal value of this option is the name of the currently
0184         active slave, or the empty string if there is no active slave or
0185         the current mode does not use an active slave.
0186 
0187 ad_actor_sys_prio
0188 
0189         In an AD system, this specifies the system priority. The allowed range
0190         is 1 - 65535. If the value is not specified, it takes 65535 as the
0191         default value.
0192 
0193         This parameter has effect only in 802.3ad mode and is available through
0194         SysFs interface.
0195 
0196 ad_actor_system
0197 
0198         In an AD system, this specifies the mac-address for the actor in
0199         protocol packet exchanges (LACPDUs). The value cannot be a multicast
0200         address. If the all-zeroes MAC is specified, bonding will internally
0201         use the MAC of the bond itself. It is preferred to have the
0202         local-admin bit set for this mac but driver does not enforce it. If
0203         the value is not given then system defaults to using the masters'
0204         mac address as actors' system address.
0205 
0206         This parameter has effect only in 802.3ad mode and is available through
0207         SysFs interface.
0208 
0209 ad_select
0210 
0211         Specifies the 802.3ad aggregation selection logic to use.  The
0212         possible values and their effects are:
0213 
0214         stable or 0
0215 
0216                 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate
0217                 bandwidth.
0218 
0219                 Reselection of the active aggregator occurs only when all
0220                 slaves of the active aggregator are down or the active
0221                 aggregator has no slaves.
0222 
0223                 This is the default value.
0224 
0225         bandwidth or 1
0226 
0227                 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate
0228                 bandwidth.  Reselection occurs if:
0229 
0230                 - A slave is added to or removed from the bond
0231 
0232                 - Any slave's link state changes
0233 
0234                 - Any slave's 802.3ad association state changes
0235 
0236                 - The bond's administrative state changes to up
0237 
0238         count or 2
0239 
0240                 The active aggregator is chosen by the largest number of
0241                 ports (slaves).  Reselection occurs as described under the
0242                 "bandwidth" setting, above.
0243 
0244         The bandwidth and count selection policies permit failover of
0245         802.3ad aggregations when partial failure of the active aggregator
0246         occurs.  This keeps the aggregator with the highest availability
0247         (either in bandwidth or in number of ports) active at all times.
0248 
0249         This option was added in bonding version 3.4.0.
0250 
0251 ad_user_port_key
0252 
0253         In an AD system, the port-key has three parts as shown below -
0254 
0255            =====  ============
0256            Bits   Use
0257            =====  ============
0258            00     Duplex
0259            01-05  Speed
0260            06-15  User-defined
0261            =====  ============
0262 
0263         This defines the upper 10 bits of the port key. The values can be
0264         from 0 - 1023. If not given, the system defaults to 0.
0265 
0266         This parameter has effect only in 802.3ad mode and is available through
0267         SysFs interface.
0268 
0269 all_slaves_active
0270 
0271         Specifies that duplicate frames (received on inactive ports) should be
0272         dropped (0) or delivered (1).
0273 
0274         Normally, bonding will drop duplicate frames (received on inactive
0275         ports), which is desirable for most users. But there are some times
0276         it is nice to allow duplicate frames to be delivered.
0277 
0278         The default value is 0 (drop duplicate frames received on inactive
0279         ports).
0280 
0281 arp_interval
0282 
0283         Specifies the ARP link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.
0284 
0285         The ARP monitor works by periodically checking the slave
0286         devices to determine whether they have sent or received
0287         traffic recently (the precise criteria depends upon the
0288         bonding mode, and the state of the slave).  Regular traffic is
0289         generated via ARP probes issued for the addresses specified by
0290         the arp_ip_target option.
0291 
0292         This behavior can be modified by the arp_validate option,
0293         below.
0294 
0295         If ARP monitoring is used in an etherchannel compatible mode
0296         (modes 0 and 2), the switch should be configured in a mode
0297         that evenly distributes packets across all links. If the
0298         switch is configured to distribute the packets in an XOR
0299         fashion, all replies from the ARP targets will be received on
0300         the same link which could cause the other team members to
0301         fail.  ARP monitoring should not be used in conjunction with
0302         miimon.  A value of 0 disables ARP monitoring.  The default
0303         value is 0.
0304 
0305 arp_ip_target
0306 
0307         Specifies the IP addresses to use as ARP monitoring peers when
0308         arp_interval is > 0.  These are the targets of the ARP request
0309         sent to determine the health of the link to the targets.
0310         Specify these values in ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd format.  Multiple IP
0311         addresses must be separated by a comma.  At least one IP
0312         address must be given for ARP monitoring to function.  The
0313         maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16.  The
0314         default value is no IP addresses.
0315 
0316 ns_ip6_target
0317 
0318         Specifies the IPv6 addresses to use as IPv6 monitoring peers when
0319         arp_interval is > 0.  These are the targets of the NS request
0320         sent to determine the health of the link to the targets.
0321         Specify these values in ffff:ffff::ffff:ffff format.  Multiple IPv6
0322         addresses must be separated by a comma.  At least one IPv6
0323         address must be given for NS/NA monitoring to function.  The
0324         maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16.  The
0325         default value is no IPv6 addresses.
0326 
0327 arp_validate
0328 
0329         Specifies whether or not ARP probes and replies should be
0330         validated in any mode that supports arp monitoring, or whether
0331         non-ARP traffic should be filtered (disregarded) for link
0332         monitoring purposes.
0333 
0334         Possible values are:
0335 
0336         none or 0
0337 
0338                 No validation or filtering is performed.
0339 
0340         active or 1
0341 
0342                 Validation is performed only for the active slave.
0343 
0344         backup or 2
0345 
0346                 Validation is performed only for backup slaves.
0347 
0348         all or 3
0349 
0350                 Validation is performed for all slaves.
0351 
0352         filter or 4
0353 
0354                 Filtering is applied to all slaves. No validation is
0355                 performed.
0356 
0357         filter_active or 5
0358 
0359                 Filtering is applied to all slaves, validation is performed
0360                 only for the active slave.
0361 
0362         filter_backup or 6
0363 
0364                 Filtering is applied to all slaves, validation is performed
0365                 only for backup slaves.
0366 
0367         Validation:
0368 
0369         Enabling validation causes the ARP monitor to examine the incoming
0370         ARP requests and replies, and only consider a slave to be up if it
0371         is receiving the appropriate ARP traffic.
0372 
0373         For an active slave, the validation checks ARP replies to confirm
0374         that they were generated by an arp_ip_target.  Since backup slaves
0375         do not typically receive these replies, the validation performed
0376         for backup slaves is on the broadcast ARP request sent out via the
0377         active slave.  It is possible that some switch or network
0378         configurations may result in situations wherein the backup slaves
0379         do not receive the ARP requests; in such a situation, validation
0380         of backup slaves must be disabled.
0381 
0382         The validation of ARP requests on backup slaves is mainly helping
0383         bonding to decide which slaves are more likely to work in case of
0384         the active slave failure, it doesn't really guarantee that the
0385         backup slave will work if it's selected as the next active slave.
0386 
0387         Validation is useful in network configurations in which multiple
0388         bonding hosts are concurrently issuing ARPs to one or more targets
0389         beyond a common switch.  Should the link between the switch and
0390         target fail (but not the switch itself), the probe traffic
0391         generated by the multiple bonding instances will fool the standard
0392         ARP monitor into considering the links as still up.  Use of
0393         validation can resolve this, as the ARP monitor will only consider
0394         ARP requests and replies associated with its own instance of
0395         bonding.
0396 
0397         Filtering:
0398 
0399         Enabling filtering causes the ARP monitor to only use incoming ARP
0400         packets for link availability purposes.  Arriving packets that are
0401         not ARPs are delivered normally, but do not count when determining
0402         if a slave is available.
0403 
0404         Filtering operates by only considering the reception of ARP
0405         packets (any ARP packet, regardless of source or destination) when
0406         determining if a slave has received traffic for link availability
0407         purposes.
0408 
0409         Filtering is useful in network configurations in which significant
0410         levels of third party broadcast traffic would fool the standard
0411         ARP monitor into considering the links as still up.  Use of
0412         filtering can resolve this, as only ARP traffic is considered for
0413         link availability purposes.
0414 
0415         This option was added in bonding version 3.1.0.
0416 
0417 arp_all_targets
0418 
0419         Specifies the quantity of arp_ip_targets that must be reachable
0420         in order for the ARP monitor to consider a slave as being up.
0421         This option affects only active-backup mode for slaves with
0422         arp_validation enabled.
0423 
0424         Possible values are:
0425 
0426         any or 0
0427 
0428                 consider the slave up only when any of the arp_ip_targets
0429                 is reachable
0430 
0431         all or 1
0432 
0433                 consider the slave up only when all of the arp_ip_targets
0434                 are reachable
0435 
0436 arp_missed_max
0437 
0438         Specifies the number of arp_interval monitor checks that must
0439         fail in order for an interface to be marked down by the ARP monitor.
0440 
0441         In order to provide orderly failover semantics, backup interfaces
0442         are permitted an extra monitor check (i.e., they must fail
0443         arp_missed_max + 1 times before being marked down).
0444 
0445         The default value is 2, and the allowable range is 1 - 255.
0446 
0447 downdelay
0448 
0449         Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before disabling
0450         a slave after a link failure has been detected.  This option
0451         is only valid for the miimon link monitor.  The downdelay
0452         value should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it
0453         will be rounded down to the nearest multiple.  The default
0454         value is 0.
0455 
0456 fail_over_mac
0457 
0458         Specifies whether active-backup mode should set all slaves to
0459         the same MAC address at enslavement (the traditional
0460         behavior), or, when enabled, perform special handling of the
0461         bond's MAC address in accordance with the selected policy.
0462 
0463         Possible values are:
0464 
0465         none or 0
0466 
0467                 This setting disables fail_over_mac, and causes
0468                 bonding to set all slaves of an active-backup bond to
0469                 the same MAC address at enslavement time.  This is the
0470                 default.
0471 
0472         active or 1
0473 
0474                 The "active" fail_over_mac policy indicates that the
0475                 MAC address of the bond should always be the MAC
0476                 address of the currently active slave.  The MAC
0477                 address of the slaves is not changed; instead, the MAC
0478                 address of the bond changes during a failover.
0479 
0480                 This policy is useful for devices that cannot ever
0481                 alter their MAC address, or for devices that refuse
0482                 incoming broadcasts with their own source MAC (which
0483                 interferes with the ARP monitor).
0484 
0485                 The down side of this policy is that every device on
0486                 the network must be updated via gratuitous ARP,
0487                 vs. just updating a switch or set of switches (which
0488                 often takes place for any traffic, not just ARP
0489                 traffic, if the switch snoops incoming traffic to
0490                 update its tables) for the traditional method.  If the
0491                 gratuitous ARP is lost, communication may be
0492                 disrupted.
0493 
0494                 When this policy is used in conjunction with the mii
0495                 monitor, devices which assert link up prior to being
0496                 able to actually transmit and receive are particularly
0497                 susceptible to loss of the gratuitous ARP, and an
0498                 appropriate updelay setting may be required.
0499 
0500         follow or 2
0501 
0502                 The "follow" fail_over_mac policy causes the MAC
0503                 address of the bond to be selected normally (normally
0504                 the MAC address of the first slave added to the bond).
0505                 However, the second and subsequent slaves are not set
0506                 to this MAC address while they are in a backup role; a
0507                 slave is programmed with the bond's MAC address at
0508                 failover time (and the formerly active slave receives
0509                 the newly active slave's MAC address).
0510 
0511                 This policy is useful for multiport devices that
0512                 either become confused or incur a performance penalty
0513                 when multiple ports are programmed with the same MAC
0514                 address.
0515 
0516 
0517         The default policy is none, unless the first slave cannot
0518         change its MAC address, in which case the active policy is
0519         selected by default.
0520 
0521         This option may be modified via sysfs only when no slaves are
0522         present in the bond.
0523 
0524         This option was added in bonding version 3.2.0.  The "follow"
0525         policy was added in bonding version 3.3.0.
0526 
0527 lacp_active
0528         Option specifying whether to send LACPDU frames periodically.
0529 
0530         off or 0
0531                 LACPDU frames acts as "speak when spoken to".
0532 
0533         on or 1
0534                 LACPDU frames are sent along the configured links
0535                 periodically. See lacp_rate for more details.
0536 
0537         The default is on.
0538 
0539 lacp_rate
0540 
0541         Option specifying the rate in which we'll ask our link partner
0542         to transmit LACPDU packets in 802.3ad mode.  Possible values
0543         are:
0544 
0545         slow or 0
0546                 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 30 seconds
0547 
0548         fast or 1
0549                 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 1 second
0550 
0551         The default is slow.
0552 
0553 max_bonds
0554 
0555         Specifies the number of bonding devices to create for this
0556         instance of the bonding driver.  E.g., if max_bonds is 3, and
0557         the bonding driver is not already loaded, then bond0, bond1
0558         and bond2 will be created.  The default value is 1.  Specifying
0559         a value of 0 will load bonding, but will not create any devices.
0560 
0561 miimon
0562 
0563         Specifies the MII link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.
0564         This determines how often the link state of each slave is
0565         inspected for link failures.  A value of zero disables MII
0566         link monitoring.  A value of 100 is a good starting point.
0567         The use_carrier option, below, affects how the link state is
0568         determined.  See the High Availability section for additional
0569         information.  The default value is 0.
0570 
0571 min_links
0572 
0573         Specifies the minimum number of links that must be active before
0574         asserting carrier. It is similar to the Cisco EtherChannel min-links
0575         feature. This allows setting the minimum number of member ports that
0576         must be up (link-up state) before marking the bond device as up
0577         (carrier on). This is useful for situations where higher level services
0578         such as clustering want to ensure a minimum number of low bandwidth
0579         links are active before switchover. This option only affect 802.3ad
0580         mode.
0581 
0582         The default value is 0. This will cause carrier to be asserted (for
0583         802.3ad mode) whenever there is an active aggregator, regardless of the
0584         number of available links in that aggregator. Note that, because an
0585         aggregator cannot be active without at least one available link,
0586         setting this option to 0 or to 1 has the exact same effect.
0587 
0588 mode
0589 
0590         Specifies one of the bonding policies. The default is
0591         balance-rr (round robin).  Possible values are:
0592 
0593         balance-rr or 0
0594 
0595                 Round-robin policy: Transmit packets in sequential
0596                 order from the first available slave through the
0597                 last.  This mode provides load balancing and fault
0598                 tolerance.
0599 
0600         active-backup or 1
0601 
0602                 Active-backup policy: Only one slave in the bond is
0603                 active.  A different slave becomes active if, and only
0604                 if, the active slave fails.  The bond's MAC address is
0605                 externally visible on only one port (network adapter)
0606                 to avoid confusing the switch.
0607 
0608                 In bonding version 2.6.2 or later, when a failover
0609                 occurs in active-backup mode, bonding will issue one
0610                 or more gratuitous ARPs on the newly active slave.
0611                 One gratuitous ARP is issued for the bonding master
0612                 interface and each VLAN interfaces configured above
0613                 it, provided that the interface has at least one IP
0614                 address configured.  Gratuitous ARPs issued for VLAN
0615                 interfaces are tagged with the appropriate VLAN id.
0616 
0617                 This mode provides fault tolerance.  The primary
0618                 option, documented below, affects the behavior of this
0619                 mode.
0620 
0621         balance-xor or 2
0622 
0623                 XOR policy: Transmit based on the selected transmit
0624                 hash policy.  The default policy is a simple [(source
0625                 MAC address XOR'd with destination MAC address XOR
0626                 packet type ID) modulo slave count].  Alternate transmit
0627                 policies may be selected via the xmit_hash_policy option,
0628                 described below.
0629 
0630                 This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
0631 
0632         broadcast or 3
0633 
0634                 Broadcast policy: transmits everything on all slave
0635                 interfaces.  This mode provides fault tolerance.
0636 
0637         802.3ad or 4
0638 
0639                 IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation.  Creates
0640                 aggregation groups that share the same speed and
0641                 duplex settings.  Utilizes all slaves in the active
0642                 aggregator according to the 802.3ad specification.
0643 
0644                 Slave selection for outgoing traffic is done according
0645                 to the transmit hash policy, which may be changed from
0646                 the default simple XOR policy via the xmit_hash_policy
0647                 option, documented below.  Note that not all transmit
0648                 policies may be 802.3ad compliant, particularly in
0649                 regards to the packet mis-ordering requirements of
0650                 section 43.2.4 of the 802.3ad standard.  Differing
0651                 peer implementations will have varying tolerances for
0652                 noncompliance.
0653 
0654                 Prerequisites:
0655 
0656                 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving
0657                 the speed and duplex of each slave.
0658 
0659                 2. A switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link
0660                 aggregation.
0661 
0662                 Most switches will require some type of configuration
0663                 to enable 802.3ad mode.
0664 
0665         balance-tlb or 5
0666 
0667                 Adaptive transmit load balancing: channel bonding that
0668                 does not require any special switch support.
0669 
0670                 In tlb_dynamic_lb=1 mode; the outgoing traffic is
0671                 distributed according to the current load (computed
0672                 relative to the speed) on each slave.
0673 
0674                 In tlb_dynamic_lb=0 mode; the load balancing based on
0675                 current load is disabled and the load is distributed
0676                 only using the hash distribution.
0677 
0678                 Incoming traffic is received by the current slave.
0679                 If the receiving slave fails, another slave takes over
0680                 the MAC address of the failed receiving slave.
0681 
0682                 Prerequisite:
0683 
0684                 Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving the
0685                 speed of each slave.
0686 
0687         balance-alb or 6
0688 
0689                 Adaptive load balancing: includes balance-tlb plus
0690                 receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and
0691                 does not require any special switch support.  The
0692                 receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation.
0693                 The bonding driver intercepts the ARP Replies sent by
0694                 the local system on their way out and overwrites the
0695                 source hardware address with the unique hardware
0696                 address of one of the slaves in the bond such that
0697                 different peers use different hardware addresses for
0698                 the server.
0699 
0700                 Receive traffic from connections created by the server
0701                 is also balanced.  When the local system sends an ARP
0702                 Request the bonding driver copies and saves the peer's
0703                 IP information from the ARP packet.  When the ARP
0704                 Reply arrives from the peer, its hardware address is
0705                 retrieved and the bonding driver initiates an ARP
0706                 reply to this peer assigning it to one of the slaves
0707                 in the bond.  A problematic outcome of using ARP
0708                 negotiation for balancing is that each time that an
0709                 ARP request is broadcast it uses the hardware address
0710                 of the bond.  Hence, peers learn the hardware address
0711                 of the bond and the balancing of receive traffic
0712                 collapses to the current slave.  This is handled by
0713                 sending updates (ARP Replies) to all the peers with
0714                 their individually assigned hardware address such that
0715                 the traffic is redistributed.  Receive traffic is also
0716                 redistributed when a new slave is added to the bond
0717                 and when an inactive slave is re-activated.  The
0718                 receive load is distributed sequentially (round robin)
0719                 among the group of highest speed slaves in the bond.
0720 
0721                 When a link is reconnected or a new slave joins the
0722                 bond the receive traffic is redistributed among all
0723                 active slaves in the bond by initiating ARP Replies
0724                 with the selected MAC address to each of the
0725                 clients. The updelay parameter (detailed below) must
0726                 be set to a value equal or greater than the switch's
0727                 forwarding delay so that the ARP Replies sent to the
0728                 peers will not be blocked by the switch.
0729 
0730                 Prerequisites:
0731 
0732                 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving
0733                 the speed of each slave.
0734 
0735                 2. Base driver support for setting the hardware
0736                 address of a device while it is open.  This is
0737                 required so that there will always be one slave in the
0738                 team using the bond hardware address (the
0739                 curr_active_slave) while having a unique hardware
0740                 address for each slave in the bond.  If the
0741                 curr_active_slave fails its hardware address is
0742                 swapped with the new curr_active_slave that was
0743                 chosen.
0744 
0745 num_grat_arp,
0746 num_unsol_na
0747 
0748         Specify the number of peer notifications (gratuitous ARPs and
0749         unsolicited IPv6 Neighbor Advertisements) to be issued after a
0750         failover event.  As soon as the link is up on the new slave
0751         (possibly immediately) a peer notification is sent on the
0752         bonding device and each VLAN sub-device. This is repeated at
0753         the rate specified by peer_notif_delay if the number is
0754         greater than 1.
0755 
0756         The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1.  These options
0757         affect only the active-backup mode.  These options were added for
0758         bonding versions 3.3.0 and 3.4.0 respectively.
0759 
0760         From Linux 3.0 and bonding version 3.7.1, these notifications
0761         are generated by the ipv4 and ipv6 code and the numbers of
0762         repetitions cannot be set independently.
0763 
0764 packets_per_slave
0765 
0766         Specify the number of packets to transmit through a slave before
0767         moving to the next one. When set to 0 then a slave is chosen at
0768         random.
0769 
0770         The valid range is 0 - 65535; the default value is 1. This option
0771         has effect only in balance-rr mode.
0772 
0773 peer_notif_delay
0774 
0775         Specify the delay, in milliseconds, between each peer
0776         notification (gratuitous ARP and unsolicited IPv6 Neighbor
0777         Advertisement) when they are issued after a failover event.
0778         This delay should be a multiple of the link monitor interval
0779         (arp_interval or miimon, whichever is active). The default
0780         value is 0 which means to match the value of the link monitor
0781         interval.
0782 
0783 prio
0784         Slave priority. A higher number means higher priority.
0785         The primary slave has the highest priority. This option also
0786         follows the primary_reselect rules.
0787 
0788         This option could only be configured via netlink, and is only valid
0789         for active-backup(1), balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6) mode.
0790         The valid value range is a signed 32 bit integer.
0791 
0792         The default value is 0.
0793 
0794 primary
0795 
0796         A string (eth0, eth2, etc) specifying which slave is the
0797         primary device.  The specified device will always be the
0798         active slave while it is available.  Only when the primary is
0799         off-line will alternate devices be used.  This is useful when
0800         one slave is preferred over another, e.g., when one slave has
0801         higher throughput than another.
0802 
0803         The primary option is only valid for active-backup(1),
0804         balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6) mode.
0805 
0806 primary_reselect
0807 
0808         Specifies the reselection policy for the primary slave.  This
0809         affects how the primary slave is chosen to become the active slave
0810         when failure of the active slave or recovery of the primary slave
0811         occurs.  This option is designed to prevent flip-flopping between
0812         the primary slave and other slaves.  Possible values are:
0813 
0814         always or 0 (default)
0815 
0816                 The primary slave becomes the active slave whenever it
0817                 comes back up.
0818 
0819         better or 1
0820 
0821                 The primary slave becomes the active slave when it comes
0822                 back up, if the speed and duplex of the primary slave is
0823                 better than the speed and duplex of the current active
0824                 slave.
0825 
0826         failure or 2
0827 
0828                 The primary slave becomes the active slave only if the
0829                 current active slave fails and the primary slave is up.
0830 
0831         The primary_reselect setting is ignored in two cases:
0832 
0833                 If no slaves are active, the first slave to recover is
0834                 made the active slave.
0835 
0836                 When initially enslaved, the primary slave is always made
0837                 the active slave.
0838 
0839         Changing the primary_reselect policy via sysfs will cause an
0840         immediate selection of the best active slave according to the new
0841         policy.  This may or may not result in a change of the active
0842         slave, depending upon the circumstances.
0843 
0844         This option was added for bonding version 3.6.0.
0845 
0846 tlb_dynamic_lb
0847 
0848         Specifies if dynamic shuffling of flows is enabled in tlb
0849         mode. The value has no effect on any other modes.
0850 
0851         The default behavior of tlb mode is to shuffle active flows across
0852         slaves based on the load in that interval. This gives nice lb
0853         characteristics but can cause packet reordering. If re-ordering is
0854         a concern use this variable to disable flow shuffling and rely on
0855         load balancing provided solely by the hash distribution.
0856         xmit-hash-policy can be used to select the appropriate hashing for
0857         the setup.
0858 
0859         The sysfs entry can be used to change the setting per bond device
0860         and the initial value is derived from the module parameter. The
0861         sysfs entry is allowed to be changed only if the bond device is
0862         down.
0863 
0864         The default value is "1" that enables flow shuffling while value "0"
0865         disables it. This option was added in bonding driver 3.7.1
0866 
0867 
0868 updelay
0869 
0870         Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before enabling a
0871         slave after a link recovery has been detected.  This option is
0872         only valid for the miimon link monitor.  The updelay value
0873         should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it will be
0874         rounded down to the nearest multiple.  The default value is 0.
0875 
0876 use_carrier
0877 
0878         Specifies whether or not miimon should use MII or ETHTOOL
0879         ioctls vs. netif_carrier_ok() to determine the link
0880         status. The MII or ETHTOOL ioctls are less efficient and
0881         utilize a deprecated calling sequence within the kernel.  The
0882         netif_carrier_ok() relies on the device driver to maintain its
0883         state with netif_carrier_on/off; at this writing, most, but
0884         not all, device drivers support this facility.
0885 
0886         If bonding insists that the link is up when it should not be,
0887         it may be that your network device driver does not support
0888         netif_carrier_on/off.  The default state for netif_carrier is
0889         "carrier on," so if a driver does not support netif_carrier,
0890         it will appear as if the link is always up.  In this case,
0891         setting use_carrier to 0 will cause bonding to revert to the
0892         MII / ETHTOOL ioctl method to determine the link state.
0893 
0894         A value of 1 enables the use of netif_carrier_ok(), a value of
0895         0 will use the deprecated MII / ETHTOOL ioctls.  The default
0896         value is 1.
0897 
0898 xmit_hash_policy
0899 
0900         Selects the transmit hash policy to use for slave selection in
0901         balance-xor, 802.3ad, and tlb modes.  Possible values are:
0902 
0903         layer2
0904 
0905                 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and packet type ID
0906                 field to generate the hash. The formula is
0907 
0908                 hash = source MAC[5] XOR destination MAC[5] XOR packet type ID
0909                 slave number = hash modulo slave count
0910 
0911                 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular
0912                 network peer on the same slave.
0913 
0914                 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant.
0915 
0916         layer2+3
0917 
0918                 This policy uses a combination of layer2 and layer3
0919                 protocol information to generate the hash.
0920 
0921                 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and IP addresses to
0922                 generate the hash.  The formula is
0923 
0924                 hash = source MAC[5] XOR destination MAC[5] XOR packet type ID
0925                 hash = hash XOR source IP XOR destination IP
0926                 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 16)
0927                 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 8)
0928                 And then hash is reduced modulo slave count.
0929 
0930                 If the protocol is IPv6 then the source and destination
0931                 addresses are first hashed using ipv6_addr_hash.
0932 
0933                 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular
0934                 network peer on the same slave.  For non-IP traffic,
0935                 the formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit
0936                 hash policy.
0937 
0938                 This policy is intended to provide a more balanced
0939                 distribution of traffic than layer2 alone, especially
0940                 in environments where a layer3 gateway device is
0941                 required to reach most destinations.
0942 
0943                 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant.
0944 
0945         layer3+4
0946 
0947                 This policy uses upper layer protocol information,
0948                 when available, to generate the hash.  This allows for
0949                 traffic to a particular network peer to span multiple
0950                 slaves, although a single connection will not span
0951                 multiple slaves.
0952 
0953                 The formula for unfragmented TCP and UDP packets is
0954 
0955                 hash = source port, destination port (as in the header)
0956                 hash = hash XOR source IP XOR destination IP
0957                 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 16)
0958                 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 8)
0959                 And then hash is reduced modulo slave count.
0960 
0961                 If the protocol is IPv6 then the source and destination
0962                 addresses are first hashed using ipv6_addr_hash.
0963 
0964                 For fragmented TCP or UDP packets and all other IPv4 and
0965                 IPv6 protocol traffic, the source and destination port
0966                 information is omitted.  For non-IP traffic, the
0967                 formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit hash
0968                 policy.
0969 
0970                 This algorithm is not fully 802.3ad compliant.  A
0971                 single TCP or UDP conversation containing both
0972                 fragmented and unfragmented packets will see packets
0973                 striped across two interfaces.  This may result in out
0974                 of order delivery.  Most traffic types will not meet
0975                 this criteria, as TCP rarely fragments traffic, and
0976                 most UDP traffic is not involved in extended
0977                 conversations.  Other implementations of 802.3ad may
0978                 or may not tolerate this noncompliance.
0979 
0980         encap2+3
0981 
0982                 This policy uses the same formula as layer2+3 but it
0983                 relies on skb_flow_dissect to obtain the header fields
0984                 which might result in the use of inner headers if an
0985                 encapsulation protocol is used. For example this will
0986                 improve the performance for tunnel users because the
0987                 packets will be distributed according to the encapsulated
0988                 flows.
0989 
0990         encap3+4
0991 
0992                 This policy uses the same formula as layer3+4 but it
0993                 relies on skb_flow_dissect to obtain the header fields
0994                 which might result in the use of inner headers if an
0995                 encapsulation protocol is used. For example this will
0996                 improve the performance for tunnel users because the
0997                 packets will be distributed according to the encapsulated
0998                 flows.
0999 
1000         vlan+srcmac
1001 
1002                 This policy uses a very rudimentary vlan ID and source mac
1003                 hash to load-balance traffic per-vlan, with failover
1004                 should one leg fail. The intended use case is for a bond
1005                 shared by multiple virtual machines, all configured to
1006                 use their own vlan, to give lacp-like functionality
1007                 without requiring lacp-capable switching hardware.
1008 
1009                 The formula for the hash is simply
1010 
1011                 hash = (vlan ID) XOR (source MAC vendor) XOR (source MAC dev)
1012 
1013         The default value is layer2.  This option was added in bonding
1014         version 2.6.3.  In earlier versions of bonding, this parameter
1015         does not exist, and the layer2 policy is the only policy.  The
1016         layer2+3 value was added for bonding version 3.2.2.
1017 
1018 resend_igmp
1019 
1020         Specifies the number of IGMP membership reports to be issued after
1021         a failover event. One membership report is issued immediately after
1022         the failover, subsequent packets are sent in each 200ms interval.
1023 
1024         The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. A value of 0
1025         prevents the IGMP membership report from being issued in response
1026         to the failover event.
1027 
1028         This option is useful for bonding modes balance-rr (0), active-backup
1029         (1), balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6), in which a failover can
1030         switch the IGMP traffic from one slave to another.  Therefore a fresh
1031         IGMP report must be issued to cause the switch to forward the incoming
1032         IGMP traffic over the newly selected slave.
1033 
1034         This option was added for bonding version 3.7.0.
1035 
1036 lp_interval
1037 
1038         Specifies the number of seconds between instances where the bonding
1039         driver sends learning packets to each slaves peer switch.
1040 
1041         The valid range is 1 - 0x7fffffff; the default value is 1. This Option
1042         has effect only in balance-tlb and balance-alb modes.
1043 
1044 3. Configuring Bonding Devices
1045 ==============================
1046 
1047 You can configure bonding using either your distro's network
1048 initialization scripts, or manually using either iproute2 or the
1049 sysfs interface.  Distros generally use one of three packages for the
1050 network initialization scripts: initscripts, sysconfig or interfaces.
1051 Recent versions of these packages have support for bonding, while older
1052 versions do not.
1053 
1054 We will first describe the options for configuring bonding for
1055 distros using versions of initscripts, sysconfig and interfaces with full
1056 or partial support for bonding, then provide information on enabling
1057 bonding without support from the network initialization scripts (i.e.,
1058 older versions of initscripts or sysconfig).
1059 
1060 If you're unsure whether your distro uses sysconfig,
1061 initscripts or interfaces, or don't know if it's new enough, have no fear.
1062 Determining this is fairly straightforward.
1063 
1064 First, look for a file called interfaces in /etc/network directory.
1065 If this file is present in your system, then your system use interfaces. See
1066 Configuration with Interfaces Support.
1067 
1068 Else, issue the command::
1069 
1070         $ rpm -qf /sbin/ifup
1071 
1072 It will respond with a line of text starting with either
1073 "initscripts" or "sysconfig," followed by some numbers.  This is the
1074 package that provides your network initialization scripts.
1075 
1076 Next, to determine if your installation supports bonding,
1077 issue the command::
1078 
1079     $ grep ifenslave /sbin/ifup
1080 
1081 If this returns any matches, then your initscripts or
1082 sysconfig has support for bonding.
1083 
1084 3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support
1085 ----------------------------------------
1086 
1087 This section applies to distros using a version of sysconfig
1088 with bonding support, for example, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.
1089 
1090 SuSE SLES 9's networking configuration system does support
1091 bonding, however, at this writing, the YaST system configuration
1092 front end does not provide any means to work with bonding devices.
1093 Bonding devices can be managed by hand, however, as follows.
1094 
1095 First, if they have not already been configured, configure the
1096 slave devices.  On SLES 9, this is most easily done by running the
1097 yast2 sysconfig configuration utility.  The goal is for to create an
1098 ifcfg-id file for each slave device.  The simplest way to accomplish
1099 this is to configure the devices for DHCP (this is only to get the
1100 file ifcfg-id file created; see below for some issues with DHCP).  The
1101 name of the configuration file for each device will be of the form::
1102 
1103     ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
1104 
1105 Where the "xx" portion will be replaced with the digits from
1106 the device's permanent MAC address.
1107 
1108 Once the set of ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files has been
1109 created, it is necessary to edit the configuration files for the slave
1110 devices (the MAC addresses correspond to those of the slave devices).
1111 Before editing, the file will contain multiple lines, and will look
1112 something like this::
1113 
1114         BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
1115         STARTMODE='on'
1116         USERCTL='no'
1117         UNIQUE='XNzu.WeZGOGF+4wE'
1118         _nm_name='bus-pci-0001:61:01.0'
1119 
1120 Change the BOOTPROTO and STARTMODE lines to the following::
1121 
1122         BOOTPROTO='none'
1123         STARTMODE='off'
1124 
1125 Do not alter the UNIQUE or _nm_name lines.  Remove any other
1126 lines (USERCTL, etc).
1127 
1128 Once the ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files have been modified,
1129 it's time to create the configuration file for the bonding device
1130 itself.  This file is named ifcfg-bondX, where X is the number of the
1131 bonding device to create, starting at 0.  The first such file is
1132 ifcfg-bond0, the second is ifcfg-bond1, and so on.  The sysconfig
1133 network configuration system will correctly start multiple instances
1134 of bonding.
1135 
1136 The contents of the ifcfg-bondX file is as follows::
1137 
1138         BOOTPROTO="static"
1139         BROADCAST="10.0.2.255"
1140         IPADDR="10.0.2.10"
1141         NETMASK="255.255.0.0"
1142         NETWORK="10.0.2.0"
1143         REMOTE_IPADDR=""
1144         STARTMODE="onboot"
1145         BONDING_MASTER="yes"
1146         BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=active-backup miimon=100"
1147         BONDING_SLAVE0="eth0"
1148         BONDING_SLAVE1="bus-pci-0000:06:08.1"
1149 
1150 Replace the sample BROADCAST, IPADDR, NETMASK and NETWORK
1151 values with the appropriate values for your network.
1152 
1153 The STARTMODE specifies when the device is brought online.
1154 The possible values are:
1155 
1156         ======== ======================================================
1157         onboot   The device is started at boot time.  If you're not
1158                  sure, this is probably what you want.
1159 
1160         manual   The device is started only when ifup is called
1161                  manually.  Bonding devices may be configured this
1162                  way if you do not wish them to start automatically
1163                  at boot for some reason.
1164 
1165         hotplug  The device is started by a hotplug event.  This is not
1166                  a valid choice for a bonding device.
1167 
1168         off or   The device configuration is ignored.
1169         ignore
1170         ======== ======================================================
1171 
1172 The line BONDING_MASTER='yes' indicates that the device is a
1173 bonding master device.  The only useful value is "yes."
1174 
1175 The contents of BONDING_MODULE_OPTS are supplied to the
1176 instance of the bonding module for this device.  Specify the options
1177 for the bonding mode, link monitoring, and so on here.  Do not include
1178 the max_bonds bonding parameter; this will confuse the configuration
1179 system if you have multiple bonding devices.
1180 
1181 Finally, supply one BONDING_SLAVEn="slave device" for each
1182 slave.  where "n" is an increasing value, one for each slave.  The
1183 "slave device" is either an interface name, e.g., "eth0", or a device
1184 specifier for the network device.  The interface name is easier to
1185 find, but the ethN names are subject to change at boot time if, e.g.,
1186 a device early in the sequence has failed.  The device specifiers
1187 (bus-pci-0000:06:08.1 in the example above) specify the physical
1188 network device, and will not change unless the device's bus location
1189 changes (for example, it is moved from one PCI slot to another).  The
1190 example above uses one of each type for demonstration purposes; most
1191 configurations will choose one or the other for all slave devices.
1192 
1193 When all configuration files have been modified or created,
1194 networking must be restarted for the configuration changes to take
1195 effect.  This can be accomplished via the following::
1196 
1197         # /etc/init.d/network restart
1198 
1199 Note that the network control script (/sbin/ifdown) will
1200 remove the bonding module as part of the network shutdown processing,
1201 so it is not necessary to remove the module by hand if, e.g., the
1202 module parameters have changed.
1203 
1204 Also, at this writing, YaST/YaST2 will not manage bonding
1205 devices (they do not show bonding interfaces on its list of network
1206 devices).  It is necessary to edit the configuration file by hand to
1207 change the bonding configuration.
1208 
1209 Additional general options and details of the ifcfg file
1210 format can be found in an example ifcfg template file::
1211 
1212         /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template
1213 
1214 Note that the template does not document the various ``BONDING_*``
1215 settings described above, but does describe many of the other options.
1216 
1217 3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig
1218 -------------------------------
1219 
1220 Under sysconfig, configuring a device with BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
1221 will cause it to query DHCP for its IP address information.  At this
1222 writing, this does not function for bonding devices; the scripts
1223 attempt to obtain the device address from DHCP prior to adding any of
1224 the slave devices.  Without active slaves, the DHCP requests are not
1225 sent to the network.
1226 
1227 3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig
1228 -----------------------------------------------
1229 
1230 The sysconfig network initialization system is capable of
1231 handling multiple bonding devices.  All that is necessary is for each
1232 bonding instance to have an appropriately configured ifcfg-bondX file
1233 (as described above).  Do not specify the "max_bonds" parameter to any
1234 instance of bonding, as this will confuse sysconfig.  If you require
1235 multiple bonding devices with identical parameters, create multiple
1236 ifcfg-bondX files.
1237 
1238 Because the sysconfig scripts supply the bonding module
1239 options in the ifcfg-bondX file, it is not necessary to add them to
1240 the system ``/etc/modules.d/*.conf`` configuration files.
1241 
1242 3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support
1243 ------------------------------------------
1244 
1245 This section applies to distros using a recent version of
1246 initscripts with bonding support, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1247 version 3 or later, Fedora, etc.  On these systems, the network
1248 initialization scripts have knowledge of bonding, and can be configured to
1249 control bonding devices.  Note that older versions of the initscripts
1250 package have lower levels of support for bonding; this will be noted where
1251 applicable.
1252 
1253 These distros will not automatically load the network adapter
1254 driver unless the ethX device is configured with an IP address.
1255 Because of this constraint, users must manually configure a
1256 network-script file for all physical adapters that will be members of
1257 a bondX link.  Network script files are located in the directory:
1258 
1259 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
1260 
1261 The file name must be prefixed with "ifcfg-eth" and suffixed
1262 with the adapter's physical adapter number.  For example, the script
1263 for eth0 would be named /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.
1264 Place the following text in the file::
1265 
1266         DEVICE=eth0
1267         USERCTL=no
1268         ONBOOT=yes
1269         MASTER=bond0
1270         SLAVE=yes
1271         BOOTPROTO=none
1272 
1273 The DEVICE= line will be different for every ethX device and
1274 must correspond with the name of the file, i.e., ifcfg-eth1 must have
1275 a device line of DEVICE=eth1.  The setting of the MASTER= line will
1276 also depend on the final bonding interface name chosen for your bond.
1277 As with other network devices, these typically start at 0, and go up
1278 one for each device, i.e., the first bonding instance is bond0, the
1279 second is bond1, and so on.
1280 
1281 Next, create a bond network script.  The file name for this
1282 script will be /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bondX where X is
1283 the number of the bond.  For bond0 the file is named "ifcfg-bond0",
1284 for bond1 it is named "ifcfg-bond1", and so on.  Within that file,
1285 place the following text::
1286 
1287         DEVICE=bond0
1288         IPADDR=192.168.1.1
1289         NETMASK=255.255.255.0
1290         NETWORK=192.168.1.0
1291         BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
1292         ONBOOT=yes
1293         BOOTPROTO=none
1294         USERCTL=no
1295 
1296 Be sure to change the networking specific lines (IPADDR,
1297 NETMASK, NETWORK and BROADCAST) to match your network configuration.
1298 
1299 For later versions of initscripts, such as that found with Fedora
1300 7 (or later) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5 (or later), it is possible,
1301 and, indeed, preferable, to specify the bonding options in the ifcfg-bond0
1302 file, e.g. a line of the format::
1303 
1304   BONDING_OPTS="mode=active-backup arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.1.254"
1305 
1306 will configure the bond with the specified options.  The options
1307 specified in BONDING_OPTS are identical to the bonding module parameters
1308 except for the arp_ip_target field when using versions of initscripts older
1309 than and 8.57 (Fedora 8) and 8.45.19 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2).  When
1310 using older versions each target should be included as a separate option and
1311 should be preceded by a '+' to indicate it should be added to the list of
1312 queried targets, e.g.,::
1313 
1314     arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.1 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.2
1315 
1316 is the proper syntax to specify multiple targets.  When specifying
1317 options via BONDING_OPTS, it is not necessary to edit
1318 ``/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf``.
1319 
1320 For even older versions of initscripts that do not support
1321 BONDING_OPTS, it is necessary to edit /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf, depending upon
1322 your distro) to load the bonding module with your desired options when the
1323 bond0 interface is brought up.  The following lines in /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf
1324 will load the bonding module, and select its options:
1325 
1326         alias bond0 bonding
1327         options bond0 mode=balance-alb miimon=100
1328 
1329 Replace the sample parameters with the appropriate set of
1330 options for your configuration.
1331 
1332 Finally run "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart" as root.  This
1333 will restart the networking subsystem and your bond link should be now
1334 up and running.
1335 
1336 3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts
1337 ---------------------------------
1338 
1339 Recent versions of initscripts (the versions supplied with Fedora
1340 Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or later versions, are reported to
1341 work) have support for assigning IP information to bonding devices via
1342 DHCP.
1343 
1344 To configure bonding for DHCP, configure it as described
1345 above, except replace the line "BOOTPROTO=none" with "BOOTPROTO=dhcp"
1346 and add a line consisting of "TYPE=Bonding".  Note that the TYPE value
1347 is case sensitive.
1348 
1349 3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts
1350 -------------------------------------------------
1351 
1352 Initscripts packages that are included with Fedora 7 and Red Hat
1353 Enterprise Linux 5 support multiple bonding interfaces by simply
1354 specifying the appropriate BONDING_OPTS= in ifcfg-bondX where X is the
1355 number of the bond.  This support requires sysfs support in the kernel,
1356 and a bonding driver of version 3.0.0 or later.  Other configurations may
1357 not support this method for specifying multiple bonding interfaces; for
1358 those instances, see the "Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually" section,
1359 below.
1360 
1361 3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with iproute2
1362 -----------------------------------------------
1363 
1364 This section applies to distros whose network initialization
1365 scripts (the sysconfig or initscripts package) do not have specific
1366 knowledge of bonding.  One such distro is SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
1367 version 8.
1368 
1369 The general method for these systems is to place the bonding
1370 module parameters into a config file in /etc/modprobe.d/ (as
1371 appropriate for the installed distro), then add modprobe and/or
1372 `ip link` commands to the system's global init script.  The name of
1373 the global init script differs; for sysconfig, it is
1374 /etc/init.d/boot.local and for initscripts it is /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
1375 
1376 For example, if you wanted to make a simple bond of two e100
1377 devices (presumed to be eth0 and eth1), and have it persist across
1378 reboots, edit the appropriate file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or
1379 /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the following::
1380 
1381         modprobe bonding mode=balance-alb miimon=100
1382         modprobe e100
1383         ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1384         ip link set eth0 master bond0
1385         ip link set eth1 master bond0
1386 
1387 Replace the example bonding module parameters and bond0
1388 network configuration (IP address, netmask, etc) with the appropriate
1389 values for your configuration.
1390 
1391 Unfortunately, this method will not provide support for the
1392 ifup and ifdown scripts on the bond devices.  To reload the bonding
1393 configuration, it is necessary to run the initialization script, e.g.,::
1394 
1395         # /etc/init.d/boot.local
1396 
1397 or::
1398 
1399         # /etc/rc.d/rc.local
1400 
1401 It may be desirable in such a case to create a separate script
1402 which only initializes the bonding configuration, then call that
1403 separate script from within boot.local.  This allows for bonding to be
1404 enabled without re-running the entire global init script.
1405 
1406 To shut down the bonding devices, it is necessary to first
1407 mark the bonding device itself as being down, then remove the
1408 appropriate device driver modules.  For our example above, you can do
1409 the following::
1410 
1411         # ifconfig bond0 down
1412         # rmmod bonding
1413         # rmmod e100
1414 
1415 Again, for convenience, it may be desirable to create a script
1416 with these commands.
1417 
1418 
1419 3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually
1420 -----------------------------------------
1421 
1422 This section contains information on configuring multiple
1423 bonding devices with differing options for those systems whose network
1424 initialization scripts lack support for configuring multiple bonds.
1425 
1426 If you require multiple bonding devices, but all with the same
1427 options, you may wish to use the "max_bonds" module parameter,
1428 documented above.
1429 
1430 To create multiple bonding devices with differing options, it is
1431 preferable to use bonding parameters exported by sysfs, documented in the
1432 section below.
1433 
1434 For versions of bonding without sysfs support, the only means to
1435 provide multiple instances of bonding with differing options is to load
1436 the bonding driver multiple times.  Note that current versions of the
1437 sysconfig network initialization scripts handle this automatically; if
1438 your distro uses these scripts, no special action is needed.  See the
1439 section Configuring Bonding Devices, above, if you're not sure about your
1440 network initialization scripts.
1441 
1442 To load multiple instances of the module, it is necessary to
1443 specify a different name for each instance (the module loading system
1444 requires that every loaded module, even multiple instances of the same
1445 module, have a unique name).  This is accomplished by supplying multiple
1446 sets of bonding options in ``/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf``, for example::
1447 
1448         alias bond0 bonding
1449         options bond0 -o bond0 mode=balance-rr miimon=100
1450 
1451         alias bond1 bonding
1452         options bond1 -o bond1 mode=balance-alb miimon=50
1453 
1454 will load the bonding module two times.  The first instance is
1455 named "bond0" and creates the bond0 device in balance-rr mode with an
1456 miimon of 100.  The second instance is named "bond1" and creates the
1457 bond1 device in balance-alb mode with an miimon of 50.
1458 
1459 In some circumstances (typically with older distributions),
1460 the above does not work, and the second bonding instance never sees
1461 its options.  In that case, the second options line can be substituted
1462 as follows::
1463 
1464         install bond1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding -o bond1 \
1465                                      mode=balance-alb miimon=50
1466 
1467 This may be repeated any number of times, specifying a new and
1468 unique name in place of bond1 for each subsequent instance.
1469 
1470 It has been observed that some Red Hat supplied kernels are unable
1471 to rename modules at load time (the "-o bond1" part).  Attempts to pass
1472 that option to modprobe will produce an "Operation not permitted" error.
1473 This has been reported on some Fedora Core kernels, and has been seen on
1474 RHEL 4 as well.  On kernels exhibiting this problem, it will be impossible
1475 to configure multiple bonds with differing parameters (as they are older
1476 kernels, and also lack sysfs support).
1477 
1478 3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs
1479 ------------------------------------------
1480 
1481 Starting with version 3.0.0, Channel Bonding may be configured
1482 via the sysfs interface.  This interface allows dynamic configuration
1483 of all bonds in the system without unloading the module.  It also
1484 allows for adding and removing bonds at runtime.  Ifenslave is no
1485 longer required, though it is still supported.
1486 
1487 Use of the sysfs interface allows you to use multiple bonds
1488 with different configurations without having to reload the module.
1489 It also allows you to use multiple, differently configured bonds when
1490 bonding is compiled into the kernel.
1491 
1492 You must have the sysfs filesystem mounted to configure
1493 bonding this way.  The examples in this document assume that you
1494 are using the standard mount point for sysfs, e.g. /sys.  If your
1495 sysfs filesystem is mounted elsewhere, you will need to adjust the
1496 example paths accordingly.
1497 
1498 Creating and Destroying Bonds
1499 -----------------------------
1500 To add a new bond foo::
1501 
1502         # echo +foo > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1503 
1504 To remove an existing bond bar::
1505 
1506         # echo -bar > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1507 
1508 To show all existing bonds::
1509 
1510         # cat /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1511 
1512 .. note::
1513 
1514    due to 4K size limitation of sysfs files, this list may be
1515    truncated if you have more than a few hundred bonds.  This is unlikely
1516    to occur under normal operating conditions.
1517 
1518 Adding and Removing Slaves
1519 --------------------------
1520 Interfaces may be enslaved to a bond using the file
1521 /sys/class/net/<bond>/bonding/slaves.  The semantics for this file
1522 are the same as for the bonding_masters file.
1523 
1524 To enslave interface eth0 to bond bond0::
1525 
1526         # ifconfig bond0 up
1527         # echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1528 
1529 To free slave eth0 from bond bond0::
1530 
1531         # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1532 
1533 When an interface is enslaved to a bond, symlinks between the
1534 two are created in the sysfs filesystem.  In this case, you would get
1535 /sys/class/net/bond0/slave_eth0 pointing to /sys/class/net/eth0, and
1536 /sys/class/net/eth0/master pointing to /sys/class/net/bond0.
1537 
1538 This means that you can tell quickly whether or not an
1539 interface is enslaved by looking for the master symlink.  Thus:
1540 # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/eth0/master/bonding/slaves
1541 will free eth0 from whatever bond it is enslaved to, regardless of
1542 the name of the bond interface.
1543 
1544 Changing a Bond's Configuration
1545 -------------------------------
1546 Each bond may be configured individually by manipulating the
1547 files located in /sys/class/net/<bond name>/bonding
1548 
1549 The names of these files correspond directly with the command-
1550 line parameters described elsewhere in this file, and, with the
1551 exception of arp_ip_target, they accept the same values.  To see the
1552 current setting, simply cat the appropriate file.
1553 
1554 A few examples will be given here; for specific usage
1555 guidelines for each parameter, see the appropriate section in this
1556 document.
1557 
1558 To configure bond0 for balance-alb mode::
1559 
1560         # ifconfig bond0 down
1561         # echo 6 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1562         - or -
1563         # echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1564 
1565 .. note::
1566 
1567    The bond interface must be down before the mode can be changed.
1568 
1569 To enable MII monitoring on bond0 with a 1 second interval::
1570 
1571         # echo 1000 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon
1572 
1573 .. note::
1574 
1575    If ARP monitoring is enabled, it will disabled when MII
1576    monitoring is enabled, and vice-versa.
1577 
1578 To add ARP targets::
1579 
1580         # echo +192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1581         # echo +192.168.0.101 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1582 
1583 .. note::
1584 
1585    up to 16 target addresses may be specified.
1586 
1587 To remove an ARP target::
1588 
1589         # echo -192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1590 
1591 To configure the interval between learning packet transmits::
1592 
1593         # echo 12 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/lp_interval
1594 
1595 .. note::
1596 
1597    the lp_interval is the number of seconds between instances where
1598    the bonding driver sends learning packets to each slaves peer switch.  The
1599    default interval is 1 second.
1600 
1601 Example Configuration
1602 ---------------------
1603 We begin with the same example that is shown in section 3.3,
1604 executed with sysfs, and without using ifenslave.
1605 
1606 To make a simple bond of two e100 devices (presumed to be eth0
1607 and eth1), and have it persist across reboots, edit the appropriate
1608 file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the
1609 following::
1610 
1611         modprobe bonding
1612         modprobe e100
1613         echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1614         ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1615         echo 100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon
1616         echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1617         echo +eth1 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1618 
1619 To add a second bond, with two e1000 interfaces in
1620 active-backup mode, using ARP monitoring, add the following lines to
1621 your init script::
1622 
1623         modprobe e1000
1624         echo +bond1 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1625         echo active-backup > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/mode
1626         ifconfig bond1 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1627         echo +192.168.2.100 /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_ip_target
1628         echo 2000 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_interval
1629         echo +eth2 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves
1630         echo +eth3 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves
1631 
1632 3.5 Configuration with Interfaces Support
1633 -----------------------------------------
1634 
1635 This section applies to distros which use /etc/network/interfaces file
1636 to describe network interface configuration, most notably Debian and it's
1637 derivatives.
1638 
1639 The ifup and ifdown commands on Debian don't support bonding out of
1640 the box. The ifenslave-2.6 package should be installed to provide bonding
1641 support.  Once installed, this package will provide ``bond-*`` options
1642 to be used into /etc/network/interfaces.
1643 
1644 Note that ifenslave-2.6 package will load the bonding module and use
1645 the ifenslave command when appropriate.
1646 
1647 Example Configurations
1648 ----------------------
1649 
1650 In /etc/network/interfaces, the following stanza will configure bond0, in
1651 active-backup mode, with eth0 and eth1 as slaves::
1652 
1653         auto bond0
1654         iface bond0 inet dhcp
1655                 bond-slaves eth0 eth1
1656                 bond-mode active-backup
1657                 bond-miimon 100
1658                 bond-primary eth0 eth1
1659 
1660 If the above configuration doesn't work, you might have a system using
1661 upstart for system startup. This is most notably true for recent
1662 Ubuntu versions. The following stanza in /etc/network/interfaces will
1663 produce the same result on those systems::
1664 
1665         auto bond0
1666         iface bond0 inet dhcp
1667                 bond-slaves none
1668                 bond-mode active-backup
1669                 bond-miimon 100
1670 
1671         auto eth0
1672         iface eth0 inet manual
1673                 bond-master bond0
1674                 bond-primary eth0 eth1
1675 
1676         auto eth1
1677         iface eth1 inet manual
1678                 bond-master bond0
1679                 bond-primary eth0 eth1
1680 
1681 For a full list of ``bond-*`` supported options in /etc/network/interfaces and
1682 some more advanced examples tailored to you particular distros, see the files in
1683 /usr/share/doc/ifenslave-2.6.
1684 
1685 3.6 Overriding Configuration for Special Cases
1686 ----------------------------------------------
1687 
1688 When using the bonding driver, the physical port which transmits a frame is
1689 typically selected by the bonding driver, and is not relevant to the user or
1690 system administrator.  The output port is simply selected using the policies of
1691 the selected bonding mode.  On occasion however, it is helpful to direct certain
1692 classes of traffic to certain physical interfaces on output to implement
1693 slightly more complex policies.  For example, to reach a web server over a
1694 bonded interface in which eth0 connects to a private network, while eth1
1695 connects via a public network, it may be desirous to bias the bond to send said
1696 traffic over eth0 first, using eth1 only as a fall back, while all other traffic
1697 can safely be sent over either interface.  Such configurations may be achieved
1698 using the traffic control utilities inherent in linux.
1699 
1700 By default the bonding driver is multiqueue aware and 16 queues are created
1701 when the driver initializes (see Documentation/networking/multiqueue.rst
1702 for details).  If more or less queues are desired the module parameter
1703 tx_queues can be used to change this value.  There is no sysfs parameter
1704 available as the allocation is done at module init time.
1705 
1706 The output of the file /proc/net/bonding/bondX has changed so the output Queue
1707 ID is now printed for each slave::
1708 
1709         Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)
1710         Primary Slave: None
1711         Currently Active Slave: eth0
1712         MII Status: up
1713         MII Polling Interval (ms): 0
1714         Up Delay (ms): 0
1715         Down Delay (ms): 0
1716 
1717         Slave Interface: eth0
1718         MII Status: up
1719         Link Failure Count: 0
1720         Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cb
1721         Slave queue ID: 0
1722 
1723         Slave Interface: eth1
1724         MII Status: up
1725         Link Failure Count: 0
1726         Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cc
1727         Slave queue ID: 2
1728 
1729 The queue_id for a slave can be set using the command::
1730 
1731         # echo "eth1:2" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/queue_id
1732 
1733 Any interface that needs a queue_id set should set it with multiple calls
1734 like the one above until proper priorities are set for all interfaces.  On
1735 distributions that allow configuration via initscripts, multiple 'queue_id'
1736 arguments can be added to BONDING_OPTS to set all needed slave queues.
1737 
1738 These queue id's can be used in conjunction with the tc utility to configure
1739 a multiqueue qdisc and filters to bias certain traffic to transmit on certain
1740 slave devices.  For instance, say we wanted, in the above configuration to
1741 force all traffic bound to 192.168.1.100 to use eth1 in the bond as its output
1742 device. The following commands would accomplish this::
1743 
1744         # tc qdisc add dev bond0 handle 1 root multiq
1745 
1746         # tc filter add dev bond0 protocol ip parent 1: prio 1 u32 match ip \
1747                 dst 192.168.1.100 action skbedit queue_mapping 2
1748 
1749 These commands tell the kernel to attach a multiqueue queue discipline to the
1750 bond0 interface and filter traffic enqueued to it, such that packets with a dst
1751 ip of 192.168.1.100 have their output queue mapping value overwritten to 2.
1752 This value is then passed into the driver, causing the normal output path
1753 selection policy to be overridden, selecting instead qid 2, which maps to eth1.
1754 
1755 Note that qid values begin at 1.  Qid 0 is reserved to initiate to the driver
1756 that normal output policy selection should take place.  One benefit to simply
1757 leaving the qid for a slave to 0 is the multiqueue awareness in the bonding
1758 driver that is now present.  This awareness allows tc filters to be placed on
1759 slave devices as well as bond devices and the bonding driver will simply act as
1760 a pass-through for selecting output queues on the slave device rather than
1761 output port selection.
1762 
1763 This feature first appeared in bonding driver version 3.7.0 and support for
1764 output slave selection was limited to round-robin and active-backup modes.
1765 
1766 3.7 Configuring LACP for 802.3ad mode in a more secure way
1767 ----------------------------------------------------------
1768 
1769 When using 802.3ad bonding mode, the Actor (host) and Partner (switch)
1770 exchange LACPDUs.  These LACPDUs cannot be sniffed, because they are
1771 destined to link local mac addresses (which switches/bridges are not
1772 supposed to forward).  However, most of the values are easily predictable
1773 or are simply the machine's MAC address (which is trivially known to all
1774 other hosts in the same L2).  This implies that other machines in the L2
1775 domain can spoof LACPDU packets from other hosts to the switch and potentially
1776 cause mayhem by joining (from the point of view of the switch) another
1777 machine's aggregate, thus receiving a portion of that hosts incoming
1778 traffic and / or spoofing traffic from that machine themselves (potentially
1779 even successfully terminating some portion of flows). Though this is not
1780 a likely scenario, one could avoid this possibility by simply configuring
1781 few bonding parameters:
1782 
1783    (a) ad_actor_system : You can set a random mac-address that can be used for
1784        these LACPDU exchanges. The value can not be either NULL or Multicast.
1785        Also it's preferable to set the local-admin bit. Following shell code
1786        generates a random mac-address as described above::
1787 
1788               # sys_mac_addr=$(printf '%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x' \
1789                                        $(( (RANDOM & 0xFE) | 0x02 )) \
1790                                        $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1791                                        $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1792                                        $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1793                                        $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1794                                        $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )))
1795               # echo $sys_mac_addr > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/ad_actor_system
1796 
1797    (b) ad_actor_sys_prio : Randomize the system priority. The default value
1798        is 65535, but system can take the value from 1 - 65535. Following shell
1799        code generates random priority and sets it::
1800 
1801             # sys_prio=$(( 1 + RANDOM + RANDOM ))
1802             # echo $sys_prio > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/ad_actor_sys_prio
1803 
1804    (c) ad_user_port_key : Use the user portion of the port-key. The default
1805        keeps this empty. These are the upper 10 bits of the port-key and value
1806        ranges from 0 - 1023. Following shell code generates these 10 bits and
1807        sets it::
1808 
1809             # usr_port_key=$(( RANDOM & 0x3FF ))
1810             # echo $usr_port_key > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/ad_user_port_key
1811 
1812 
1813 4 Querying Bonding Configuration
1814 =================================
1815 
1816 4.1 Bonding Configuration
1817 -------------------------
1818 
1819 Each bonding device has a read-only file residing in the
1820 /proc/net/bonding directory.  The file contents include information
1821 about the bonding configuration, options and state of each slave.
1822 
1823 For example, the contents of /proc/net/bonding/bond0 after the
1824 driver is loaded with parameters of mode=0 and miimon=1000 is
1825 generally as follows::
1826 
1827         Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: 2.6.1 (October 29, 2004)
1828         Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)
1829         Currently Active Slave: eth0
1830         MII Status: up
1831         MII Polling Interval (ms): 1000
1832         Up Delay (ms): 0
1833         Down Delay (ms): 0
1834 
1835         Slave Interface: eth1
1836         MII Status: up
1837         Link Failure Count: 1
1838 
1839         Slave Interface: eth0
1840         MII Status: up
1841         Link Failure Count: 1
1842 
1843 The precise format and contents will change depending upon the
1844 bonding configuration, state, and version of the bonding driver.
1845 
1846 4.2 Network configuration
1847 -------------------------
1848 
1849 The network configuration can be inspected using the ifconfig
1850 command.  Bonding devices will have the MASTER flag set; Bonding slave
1851 devices will have the SLAVE flag set.  The ifconfig output does not
1852 contain information on which slaves are associated with which masters.
1853 
1854 In the example below, the bond0 interface is the master
1855 (MASTER) while eth0 and eth1 are slaves (SLAVE). Notice all slaves of
1856 bond0 have the same MAC address (HWaddr) as bond0 for all modes except
1857 TLB and ALB that require a unique MAC address for each slave::
1858 
1859   # /sbin/ifconfig
1860   bond0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1861             inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.YYY  Bcast:XXX.XXX.XXX.255  Mask:255.255.252.0
1862             UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
1863             RX packets:7224794 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1864             TX packets:3286647 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
1865             collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
1866 
1867   eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1868             UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
1869             RX packets:3573025 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1870             TX packets:1643167 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
1871             collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
1872             Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1080
1873 
1874   eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1875             UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
1876             RX packets:3651769 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1877             TX packets:1643480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
1878             collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
1879             Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1400
1880 
1881 5. Switch Configuration
1882 =======================
1883 
1884 For this section, "switch" refers to whatever system the
1885 bonded devices are directly connected to (i.e., where the other end of
1886 the cable plugs into).  This may be an actual dedicated switch device,
1887 or it may be another regular system (e.g., another computer running
1888 Linux),
1889 
1890 The active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes do not
1891 require any specific configuration of the switch.
1892 
1893 The 802.3ad mode requires that the switch have the appropriate
1894 ports configured as an 802.3ad aggregation.  The precise method used
1895 to configure this varies from switch to switch, but, for example, a
1896 Cisco 3550 series switch requires that the appropriate ports first be
1897 grouped together in a single etherchannel instance, then that
1898 etherchannel is set to mode "lacp" to enable 802.3ad (instead of
1899 standard EtherChannel).
1900 
1901 The balance-rr, balance-xor and broadcast modes generally
1902 require that the switch have the appropriate ports grouped together.
1903 The nomenclature for such a group differs between switches, it may be
1904 called an "etherchannel" (as in the Cisco example, above), a "trunk
1905 group" or some other similar variation.  For these modes, each switch
1906 will also have its own configuration options for the switch's transmit
1907 policy to the bond.  Typical choices include XOR of either the MAC or
1908 IP addresses.  The transmit policy of the two peers does not need to
1909 match.  For these three modes, the bonding mode really selects a
1910 transmit policy for an EtherChannel group; all three will interoperate
1911 with another EtherChannel group.
1912 
1913 
1914 6. 802.1q VLAN Support
1915 ======================
1916 
1917 It is possible to configure VLAN devices over a bond interface
1918 using the 8021q driver.  However, only packets coming from the 8021q
1919 driver and passing through bonding will be tagged by default.  Self
1920 generated packets, for example, bonding's learning packets or ARP
1921 packets generated by either ALB mode or the ARP monitor mechanism, are
1922 tagged internally by bonding itself.  As a result, bonding must
1923 "learn" the VLAN IDs configured above it, and use those IDs to tag
1924 self generated packets.
1925 
1926 For reasons of simplicity, and to support the use of adapters
1927 that can do VLAN hardware acceleration offloading, the bonding
1928 interface declares itself as fully hardware offloading capable, it gets
1929 the add_vid/kill_vid notifications to gather the necessary
1930 information, and it propagates those actions to the slaves.  In case
1931 of mixed adapter types, hardware accelerated tagged packets that
1932 should go through an adapter that is not offloading capable are
1933 "un-accelerated" by the bonding driver so the VLAN tag sits in the
1934 regular location.
1935 
1936 VLAN interfaces *must* be added on top of a bonding interface
1937 only after enslaving at least one slave.  The bonding interface has a
1938 hardware address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 until the first slave is added.
1939 If the VLAN interface is created prior to the first enslavement, it
1940 would pick up the all-zeroes hardware address.  Once the first slave
1941 is attached to the bond, the bond device itself will pick up the
1942 slave's hardware address, which is then available for the VLAN device.
1943 
1944 Also, be aware that a similar problem can occur if all slaves
1945 are released from a bond that still has one or more VLAN interfaces on
1946 top of it.  When a new slave is added, the bonding interface will
1947 obtain its hardware address from the first slave, which might not
1948 match the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces (which was
1949 ultimately copied from an earlier slave).
1950 
1951 There are two methods to insure that the VLAN device operates
1952 with the correct hardware address if all slaves are removed from a
1953 bond interface:
1954 
1955 1. Remove all VLAN interfaces then recreate them
1956 
1957 2. Set the bonding interface's hardware address so that it
1958 matches the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces.
1959 
1960 Note that changing a VLAN interface's HW address would set the
1961 underlying device -- i.e. the bonding interface -- to promiscuous
1962 mode, which might not be what you want.
1963 
1964 
1965 7. Link Monitoring
1966 ==================
1967 
1968 The bonding driver at present supports two schemes for
1969 monitoring a slave device's link state: the ARP monitor and the MII
1970 monitor.
1971 
1972 At the present time, due to implementation restrictions in the
1973 bonding driver itself, it is not possible to enable both ARP and MII
1974 monitoring simultaneously.
1975 
1976 7.1 ARP Monitor Operation
1977 -------------------------
1978 
1979 The ARP monitor operates as its name suggests: it sends ARP
1980 queries to one or more designated peer systems on the network, and
1981 uses the response as an indication that the link is operating.  This
1982 gives some assurance that traffic is actually flowing to and from one
1983 or more peers on the local network.
1984 
1985 7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets
1986 ------------------------------------
1987 
1988 While ARP monitoring can be done with just one target, it can
1989 be useful in a High Availability setup to have several targets to
1990 monitor.  In the case of just one target, the target itself may go
1991 down or have a problem making it unresponsive to ARP requests.  Having
1992 an additional target (or several) increases the reliability of the ARP
1993 monitoring.
1994 
1995 Multiple ARP targets must be separated by commas as follows::
1996 
1997  # example options for ARP monitoring with three targets
1998  alias bond0 bonding
1999  options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.1,192.168.0.3,192.168.0.9
2000 
2001 For just a single target the options would resemble::
2002 
2003     # example options for ARP monitoring with one target
2004     alias bond0 bonding
2005     options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.100
2006 
2007 
2008 7.3 MII Monitor Operation
2009 -------------------------
2010 
2011 The MII monitor monitors only the carrier state of the local
2012 network interface.  It accomplishes this in one of three ways: by
2013 depending upon the device driver to maintain its carrier state, by
2014 querying the device's MII registers, or by making an ethtool query to
2015 the device.
2016 
2017 If the use_carrier module parameter is 1 (the default value),
2018 then the MII monitor will rely on the driver for carrier state
2019 information (via the netif_carrier subsystem).  As explained in the
2020 use_carrier parameter information, above, if the MII monitor fails to
2021 detect carrier loss on the device (e.g., when the cable is physically
2022 disconnected), it may be that the driver does not support
2023 netif_carrier.
2024 
2025 If use_carrier is 0, then the MII monitor will first query the
2026 device's (via ioctl) MII registers and check the link state.  If that
2027 request fails (not just that it returns carrier down), then the MII
2028 monitor will make an ethtool ETHTOOL_GLINK request to attempt to obtain
2029 the same information.  If both methods fail (i.e., the driver either
2030 does not support or had some error in processing both the MII register
2031 and ethtool requests), then the MII monitor will assume the link is
2032 up.
2033 
2034 8. Potential Sources of Trouble
2035 ===============================
2036 
2037 8.1 Adventures in Routing
2038 -------------------------
2039 
2040 When bonding is configured, it is important that the slave
2041 devices not have routes that supersede routes of the master (or,
2042 generally, not have routes at all).  For example, suppose the bonding
2043 device bond0 has two slaves, eth0 and eth1, and the routing table is
2044 as follows::
2045 
2046   Kernel IP routing table
2047   Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
2048   10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 eth0
2049   10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 eth1
2050   10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 bond0
2051   127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U        40 0          0 lo
2052 
2053 This routing configuration will likely still update the
2054 receive/transmit times in the driver (needed by the ARP monitor), but
2055 may bypass the bonding driver (because outgoing traffic to, in this
2056 case, another host on network 10 would use eth0 or eth1 before bond0).
2057 
2058 The ARP monitor (and ARP itself) may become confused by this
2059 configuration, because ARP requests (generated by the ARP monitor)
2060 will be sent on one interface (bond0), but the corresponding reply
2061 will arrive on a different interface (eth0).  This reply looks to ARP
2062 as an unsolicited ARP reply (because ARP matches replies on an
2063 interface basis), and is discarded.  The MII monitor is not affected
2064 by the state of the routing table.
2065 
2066 The solution here is simply to insure that slaves do not have
2067 routes of their own, and if for some reason they must, those routes do
2068 not supersede routes of their master.  This should generally be the
2069 case, but unusual configurations or errant manual or automatic static
2070 route additions may cause trouble.
2071 
2072 8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming
2073 ----------------------------
2074 
2075 On systems with network configuration scripts that do not
2076 associate physical devices directly with network interface names (so
2077 that the same physical device always has the same "ethX" name), it may
2078 be necessary to add some special logic to config files in
2079 /etc/modprobe.d/.
2080 
2081 For example, given a modules.conf containing the following::
2082 
2083         alias bond0 bonding
2084         options bond0 mode=some-mode miimon=50
2085         alias eth0 tg3
2086         alias eth1 tg3
2087         alias eth2 e1000
2088         alias eth3 e1000
2089 
2090 If neither eth0 and eth1 are slaves to bond0, then when the
2091 bond0 interface comes up, the devices may end up reordered.  This
2092 happens because bonding is loaded first, then its slave device's
2093 drivers are loaded next.  Since no other drivers have been loaded,
2094 when the e1000 driver loads, it will receive eth0 and eth1 for its
2095 devices, but the bonding configuration tries to enslave eth2 and eth3
2096 (which may later be assigned to the tg3 devices).
2097 
2098 Adding the following::
2099 
2100         add above bonding e1000 tg3
2101 
2102 causes modprobe to load e1000 then tg3, in that order, when
2103 bonding is loaded.  This command is fully documented in the
2104 modules.conf manual page.
2105 
2106 On systems utilizing modprobe an equivalent problem can occur.
2107 In this case, the following can be added to config files in
2108 /etc/modprobe.d/ as::
2109 
2110         softdep bonding pre: tg3 e1000
2111 
2112 This will load tg3 and e1000 modules before loading the bonding one.
2113 Full documentation on this can be found in the modprobe.d and modprobe
2114 manual pages.
2115 
2116 8.3. Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon
2117 ---------------------------------------------------------
2118 
2119 By default, bonding enables the use_carrier option, which
2120 instructs bonding to trust the driver to maintain carrier state.
2121 
2122 As discussed in the options section, above, some drivers do
2123 not support the netif_carrier_on/_off link state tracking system.
2124 With use_carrier enabled, bonding will always see these links as up,
2125 regardless of their actual state.
2126 
2127 Additionally, other drivers do support netif_carrier, but do
2128 not maintain it in real time, e.g., only polling the link state at
2129 some fixed interval.  In this case, miimon will detect failures, but
2130 only after some long period of time has expired.  If it appears that
2131 miimon is very slow in detecting link failures, try specifying
2132 use_carrier=0 to see if that improves the failure detection time.  If
2133 it does, then it may be that the driver checks the carrier state at a
2134 fixed interval, but does not cache the MII register values (so the
2135 use_carrier=0 method of querying the registers directly works).  If
2136 use_carrier=0 does not improve the failover, then the driver may cache
2137 the registers, or the problem may be elsewhere.
2138 
2139 Also, remember that miimon only checks for the device's
2140 carrier state.  It has no way to determine the state of devices on or
2141 beyond other ports of a switch, or if a switch is refusing to pass
2142 traffic while still maintaining carrier on.
2143 
2144 9. SNMP agents
2145 ===============
2146 
2147 If running SNMP agents, the bonding driver should be loaded
2148 before any network drivers participating in a bond.  This requirement
2149 is due to the interface index (ipAdEntIfIndex) being associated to
2150 the first interface found with a given IP address.  That is, there is
2151 only one ipAdEntIfIndex for each IP address.  For example, if eth0 and
2152 eth1 are slaves of bond0 and the driver for eth0 is loaded before the
2153 bonding driver, the interface for the IP address will be associated
2154 with the eth0 interface.  This configuration is shown below, the IP
2155 address 192.168.1.1 has an interface index of 2 which indexes to eth0
2156 in the ifDescr table (ifDescr.2).
2157 
2158 ::
2159 
2160      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo
2161      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = eth0
2162      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth1
2163      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth2
2164      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth3
2165      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = bond0
2166      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 5
2167      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2
2168      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 4
2169      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1
2170 
2171 This problem is avoided by loading the bonding driver before
2172 any network drivers participating in a bond.  Below is an example of
2173 loading the bonding driver first, the IP address 192.168.1.1 is
2174 correctly associated with ifDescr.2.
2175 
2176      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo
2177      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = bond0
2178      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth0
2179      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth1
2180      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth2
2181      interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = eth3
2182      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 6
2183      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2
2184      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 5
2185      ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1
2186 
2187 While some distributions may not report the interface name in
2188 ifDescr, the association between the IP address and IfIndex remains
2189 and SNMP functions such as Interface_Scan_Next will report that
2190 association.
2191 
2192 10. Promiscuous mode
2193 ====================
2194 
2195 When running network monitoring tools, e.g., tcpdump, it is
2196 common to enable promiscuous mode on the device, so that all traffic
2197 is seen (instead of seeing only traffic destined for the local host).
2198 The bonding driver handles promiscuous mode changes to the bonding
2199 master device (e.g., bond0), and propagates the setting to the slave
2200 devices.
2201 
2202 For the balance-rr, balance-xor, broadcast, and 802.3ad modes,
2203 the promiscuous mode setting is propagated to all slaves.
2204 
2205 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, the
2206 promiscuous mode setting is propagated only to the active slave.
2207 
2208 For balance-tlb mode, the active slave is the slave currently
2209 receiving inbound traffic.
2210 
2211 For balance-alb mode, the active slave is the slave used as a
2212 "primary."  This slave is used for mode-specific control traffic, for
2213 sending to peers that are unassigned or if the load is unbalanced.
2214 
2215 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, when
2216 the active slave changes (e.g., due to a link failure), the
2217 promiscuous setting will be propagated to the new active slave.
2218 
2219 11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability
2220 =============================================
2221 
2222 High Availability refers to configurations that provide
2223 maximum network availability by having redundant or backup devices,
2224 links or switches between the host and the rest of the world.  The
2225 goal is to provide the maximum availability of network connectivity
2226 (i.e., the network always works), even though other configurations
2227 could provide higher throughput.
2228 
2229 11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology
2230 --------------------------------------------------
2231 
2232 If two hosts (or a host and a single switch) are directly
2233 connected via multiple physical links, then there is no availability
2234 penalty to optimizing for maximum bandwidth.  In this case, there is
2235 only one switch (or peer), so if it fails, there is no alternative
2236 access to fail over to.  Additionally, the bonding load balance modes
2237 support link monitoring of their members, so if individual links fail,
2238 the load will be rebalanced across the remaining devices.
2239 
2240 See Section 12, "Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput"
2241 for information on configuring bonding with one peer device.
2242 
2243 11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology
2244 ----------------------------------------------------
2245 
2246 With multiple switches, the configuration of bonding and the
2247 network changes dramatically.  In multiple switch topologies, there is
2248 a trade off between network availability and usable bandwidth.
2249 
2250 Below is a sample network, configured to maximize the
2251 availability of the network::
2252 
2253                 |                                     |
2254                 |port3                           port3|
2255           +-----+----+                          +-----+----+
2256           |          |port2       ISL      port2|          |
2257           | switch A +--------------------------+ switch B |
2258           |          |                          |          |
2259           +-----+----+                          +-----++---+
2260                 |port1                           port1|
2261                 |             +-------+               |
2262                 +-------------+ host1 +---------------+
2263                          eth0 +-------+ eth1
2264 
2265 In this configuration, there is a link between the two
2266 switches (ISL, or inter switch link), and multiple ports connecting to
2267 the outside world ("port3" on each switch).  There is no technical
2268 reason that this could not be extended to a third switch.
2269 
2270 11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2271 -------------------------------------------------------------
2272 
2273 In a topology such as the example above, the active-backup and
2274 broadcast modes are the only useful bonding modes when optimizing for
2275 availability; the other modes require all links to terminate on the
2276 same peer for them to behave rationally.
2277 
2278 active-backup:
2279         This is generally the preferred mode, particularly if
2280         the switches have an ISL and play together well.  If the
2281         network configuration is such that one switch is specifically
2282         a backup switch (e.g., has lower capacity, higher cost, etc),
2283         then the primary option can be used to insure that the
2284         preferred link is always used when it is available.
2285 
2286 broadcast:
2287         This mode is really a special purpose mode, and is suitable
2288         only for very specific needs.  For example, if the two
2289         switches are not connected (no ISL), and the networks beyond
2290         them are totally independent.  In this case, if it is
2291         necessary for some specific one-way traffic to reach both
2292         independent networks, then the broadcast mode may be suitable.
2293 
2294 11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2295 ----------------------------------------------------------------
2296 
2297 The choice of link monitoring ultimately depends upon your
2298 switch.  If the switch can reliably fail ports in response to other
2299 failures, then either the MII or ARP monitors should work.  For
2300 example, in the above example, if the "port3" link fails at the remote
2301 end, the MII monitor has no direct means to detect this.  The ARP
2302 monitor could be configured with a target at the remote end of port3,
2303 thus detecting that failure without switch support.
2304 
2305 In general, however, in a multiple switch topology, the ARP
2306 monitor can provide a higher level of reliability in detecting end to
2307 end connectivity failures (which may be caused by the failure of any
2308 individual component to pass traffic for any reason).  Additionally,
2309 the ARP monitor should be configured with multiple targets (at least
2310 one for each switch in the network).  This will insure that,
2311 regardless of which switch is active, the ARP monitor has a suitable
2312 target to query.
2313 
2314 Note, also, that of late many switches now support a functionality
2315 generally referred to as "trunk failover."  This is a feature of the
2316 switch that causes the link state of a particular switch port to be set
2317 down (or up) when the state of another switch port goes down (or up).
2318 Its purpose is to propagate link failures from logically "exterior" ports
2319 to the logically "interior" ports that bonding is able to monitor via
2320 miimon.  Availability and configuration for trunk failover varies by
2321 switch, but this can be a viable alternative to the ARP monitor when using
2322 suitable switches.
2323 
2324 12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput
2325 ==============================================
2326 
2327 12.1 Maximizing Throughput in a Single Switch Topology
2328 ------------------------------------------------------
2329 
2330 In a single switch configuration, the best method to maximize
2331 throughput depends upon the application and network environment.  The
2332 various load balancing modes each have strengths and weaknesses in
2333 different environments, as detailed below.
2334 
2335 For this discussion, we will break down the topologies into
2336 two categories.  Depending upon the destination of most traffic, we
2337 categorize them into either "gatewayed" or "local" configurations.
2338 
2339 In a gatewayed configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily
2340 as a router, and the majority of traffic passes through this router to
2341 other networks.  An example would be the following::
2342 
2343 
2344      +----------+                     +----------+
2345      |          |eth0            port1|          | to other networks
2346      | Host A   +---------------------+ router   +------------------->
2347      |          +---------------------+          | Hosts B and C are out
2348      |          |eth1            port2|          | here somewhere
2349      +----------+                     +----------+
2350 
2351 The router may be a dedicated router device, or another host
2352 acting as a gateway.  For our discussion, the important point is that
2353 the majority of traffic from Host A will pass through the router to
2354 some other network before reaching its final destination.
2355 
2356 In a gatewayed network configuration, although Host A may
2357 communicate with many other systems, all of its traffic will be sent
2358 and received via one other peer on the local network, the router.
2359 
2360 Note that the case of two systems connected directly via
2361 multiple physical links is, for purposes of configuring bonding, the
2362 same as a gatewayed configuration.  In that case, it happens that all
2363 traffic is destined for the "gateway" itself, not some other network
2364 beyond the gateway.
2365 
2366 In a local configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily as
2367 a switch, and the majority of traffic passes through this switch to
2368 reach other stations on the same network.  An example would be the
2369 following::
2370 
2371     +----------+            +----------+       +--------+
2372     |          |eth0   port1|          +-------+ Host B |
2373     |  Host A  +------------+  switch  |port3  +--------+
2374     |          +------------+          |                  +--------+
2375     |          |eth1   port2|          +------------------+ Host C |
2376     +----------+            +----------+port4             +--------+
2377 
2378 
2379 Again, the switch may be a dedicated switch device, or another
2380 host acting as a gateway.  For our discussion, the important point is
2381 that the majority of traffic from Host A is destined for other hosts
2382 on the same local network (Hosts B and C in the above example).
2383 
2384 In summary, in a gatewayed configuration, traffic to and from
2385 the bonded device will be to the same MAC level peer on the network
2386 (the gateway itself, i.e., the router), regardless of its final
2387 destination.  In a local configuration, traffic flows directly to and
2388 from the final destinations, thus, each destination (Host B, Host C)
2389 will be addressed directly by their individual MAC addresses.
2390 
2391 This distinction between a gatewayed and a local network
2392 configuration is important because many of the load balancing modes
2393 available use the MAC addresses of the local network source and
2394 destination to make load balancing decisions.  The behavior of each
2395 mode is described below.
2396 
2397 
2398 12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology
2399 -----------------------------------------------------------
2400 
2401 This configuration is the easiest to set up and to understand,
2402 although you will have to decide which bonding mode best suits your
2403 needs.  The trade offs for each mode are detailed below:
2404 
2405 balance-rr:
2406         This mode is the only mode that will permit a single
2407         TCP/IP connection to stripe traffic across multiple
2408         interfaces. It is therefore the only mode that will allow a
2409         single TCP/IP stream to utilize more than one interface's
2410         worth of throughput.  This comes at a cost, however: the
2411         striping generally results in peer systems receiving packets out
2412         of order, causing TCP/IP's congestion control system to kick
2413         in, often by retransmitting segments.
2414 
2415         It is possible to adjust TCP/IP's congestion limits by
2416         altering the net.ipv4.tcp_reordering sysctl parameter.  The
2417         usual default value is 3. But keep in mind TCP stack is able
2418         to automatically increase this when it detects reorders.
2419 
2420         Note that the fraction of packets that will be delivered out of
2421         order is highly variable, and is unlikely to be zero.  The level
2422         of reordering depends upon a variety of factors, including the
2423         networking interfaces, the switch, and the topology of the
2424         configuration.  Speaking in general terms, higher speed network
2425         cards produce more reordering (due to factors such as packet
2426         coalescing), and a "many to many" topology will reorder at a
2427         higher rate than a "many slow to one fast" configuration.
2428 
2429         Many switches do not support any modes that stripe traffic
2430         (instead choosing a port based upon IP or MAC level addresses);
2431         for those devices, traffic for a particular connection flowing
2432         through the switch to a balance-rr bond will not utilize greater
2433         than one interface's worth of bandwidth.
2434 
2435         If you are utilizing protocols other than TCP/IP, UDP for
2436         example, and your application can tolerate out of order
2437         delivery, then this mode can allow for single stream datagram
2438         performance that scales near linearly as interfaces are added
2439         to the bond.
2440 
2441         This mode requires the switch to have the appropriate ports
2442         configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking."
2443 
2444 active-backup:
2445         There is not much advantage in this network topology to
2446         the active-backup mode, as the inactive backup devices are all
2447         connected to the same peer as the primary.  In this case, a
2448         load balancing mode (with link monitoring) will provide the
2449         same level of network availability, but with increased
2450         available bandwidth.  On the plus side, active-backup mode
2451         does not require any configuration of the switch, so it may
2452         have value if the hardware available does not support any of
2453         the load balance modes.
2454 
2455 balance-xor:
2456         This mode will limit traffic such that packets destined
2457         for specific peers will always be sent over the same
2458         interface.  Since the destination is determined by the MAC
2459         addresses involved, this mode works best in a "local" network
2460         configuration (as described above), with destinations all on
2461         the same local network.  This mode is likely to be suboptimal
2462         if all your traffic is passed through a single router (i.e., a
2463         "gatewayed" network configuration, as described above).
2464 
2465         As with balance-rr, the switch ports need to be configured for
2466         "etherchannel" or "trunking."
2467 
2468 broadcast:
2469         Like active-backup, there is not much advantage to this
2470         mode in this type of network topology.
2471 
2472 802.3ad:
2473         This mode can be a good choice for this type of network
2474         topology.  The 802.3ad mode is an IEEE standard, so all peers
2475         that implement 802.3ad should interoperate well.  The 802.3ad
2476         protocol includes automatic configuration of the aggregates,
2477         so minimal manual configuration of the switch is needed
2478         (typically only to designate that some set of devices is
2479         available for 802.3ad).  The 802.3ad standard also mandates
2480         that frames be delivered in order (within certain limits), so
2481         in general single connections will not see misordering of
2482         packets.  The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the
2483         standard mandates that all devices in the aggregate operate at
2484         the same speed and duplex.  Also, as with all bonding load
2485         balance modes other than balance-rr, no single connection will
2486         be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of
2487         bandwidth.
2488 
2489         Additionally, the linux bonding 802.3ad implementation
2490         distributes traffic by peer (using an XOR of MAC addresses
2491         and packet type ID), so in a "gatewayed" configuration, all
2492         outgoing traffic will generally use the same device.  Incoming
2493         traffic may also end up on a single device, but that is
2494         dependent upon the balancing policy of the peer's 802.3ad
2495         implementation.  In a "local" configuration, traffic will be
2496         distributed across the devices in the bond.
2497 
2498         Finally, the 802.3ad mode mandates the use of the MII monitor,
2499         therefore, the ARP monitor is not available in this mode.
2500 
2501 balance-tlb:
2502         The balance-tlb mode balances outgoing traffic by peer.
2503         Since the balancing is done according to MAC address, in a
2504         "gatewayed" configuration (as described above), this mode will
2505         send all traffic across a single device.  However, in a
2506         "local" network configuration, this mode balances multiple
2507         local network peers across devices in a vaguely intelligent
2508         manner (not a simple XOR as in balance-xor or 802.3ad mode),
2509         so that mathematically unlucky MAC addresses (i.e., ones that
2510         XOR to the same value) will not all "bunch up" on a single
2511         interface.
2512 
2513         Unlike 802.3ad, interfaces may be of differing speeds, and no
2514         special switch configuration is required.  On the down side,
2515         in this mode all incoming traffic arrives over a single
2516         interface, this mode requires certain ethtool support in the
2517         network device driver of the slave interfaces, and the ARP
2518         monitor is not available.
2519 
2520 balance-alb:
2521         This mode is everything that balance-tlb is, and more.
2522         It has all of the features (and restrictions) of balance-tlb,
2523         and will also balance incoming traffic from local network
2524         peers (as described in the Bonding Module Options section,
2525         above).
2526 
2527         The only additional down side to this mode is that the network
2528         device driver must support changing the hardware address while
2529         the device is open.
2530 
2531 12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology
2532 ----------------------------------------------------
2533 
2534 The choice of link monitoring may largely depend upon which
2535 mode you choose to use.  The more advanced load balancing modes do not
2536 support the use of the ARP monitor, and are thus restricted to using
2537 the MII monitor (which does not provide as high a level of end to end
2538 assurance as the ARP monitor).
2539 
2540 12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology
2541 -----------------------------------------------------
2542 
2543 Multiple switches may be utilized to optimize for throughput
2544 when they are configured in parallel as part of an isolated network
2545 between two or more systems, for example::
2546 
2547                        +-----------+
2548                        |  Host A   |
2549                        +-+---+---+-+
2550                          |   |   |
2551                 +--------+   |   +---------+
2552                 |            |             |
2553          +------+---+  +-----+----+  +-----+----+
2554          | Switch A |  | Switch B |  | Switch C |
2555          +------+---+  +-----+----+  +-----+----+
2556                 |            |             |
2557                 +--------+   |   +---------+
2558                          |   |   |
2559                        +-+---+---+-+
2560                        |  Host B   |
2561                        +-----------+
2562 
2563 In this configuration, the switches are isolated from one
2564 another.  One reason to employ a topology such as this is for an
2565 isolated network with many hosts (a cluster configured for high
2566 performance, for example), using multiple smaller switches can be more
2567 cost effective than a single larger switch, e.g., on a network with 24
2568 hosts, three 24 port switches can be significantly less expensive than
2569 a single 72 port switch.
2570 
2571 If access beyond the network is required, an individual host
2572 can be equipped with an additional network device connected to an
2573 external network; this host then additionally acts as a gateway.
2574 
2575 12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2576 -------------------------------------------------------------
2577 
2578 In actual practice, the bonding mode typically employed in
2579 configurations of this type is balance-rr.  Historically, in this
2580 network configuration, the usual caveats about out of order packet
2581 delivery are mitigated by the use of network adapters that do not do
2582 any kind of packet coalescing (via the use of NAPI, or because the
2583 device itself does not generate interrupts until some number of
2584 packets has arrived).  When employed in this fashion, the balance-rr
2585 mode allows individual connections between two hosts to effectively
2586 utilize greater than one interface's bandwidth.
2587 
2588 12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
2589 ------------------------------------------------------
2590 
2591 Again, in actual practice, the MII monitor is most often used
2592 in this configuration, as performance is given preference over
2593 availability.  The ARP monitor will function in this topology, but its
2594 advantages over the MII monitor are mitigated by the volume of probes
2595 needed as the number of systems involved grows (remember that each
2596 host in the network is configured with bonding).
2597 
2598 13. Switch Behavior Issues
2599 ==========================
2600 
2601 13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays
2602 -------------------------------------------
2603 
2604 Some switches exhibit undesirable behavior with regard to the
2605 timing of link up and down reporting by the switch.
2606 
2607 First, when a link comes up, some switches may indicate that
2608 the link is up (carrier available), but not pass traffic over the
2609 interface for some period of time.  This delay is typically due to
2610 some type of autonegotiation or routing protocol, but may also occur
2611 during switch initialization (e.g., during recovery after a switch
2612 failure).  If you find this to be a problem, specify an appropriate
2613 value to the updelay bonding module option to delay the use of the
2614 relevant interface(s).
2615 
2616 Second, some switches may "bounce" the link state one or more
2617 times while a link is changing state.  This occurs most commonly while
2618 the switch is initializing.  Again, an appropriate updelay value may
2619 help.
2620 
2621 Note that when a bonding interface has no active links, the
2622 driver will immediately reuse the first link that goes up, even if the
2623 updelay parameter has been specified (the updelay is ignored in this
2624 case).  If there are slave interfaces waiting for the updelay timeout
2625 to expire, the interface that first went into that state will be
2626 immediately reused.  This reduces down time of the network if the
2627 value of updelay has been overestimated, and since this occurs only in
2628 cases with no connectivity, there is no additional penalty for
2629 ignoring the updelay.
2630 
2631 In addition to the concerns about switch timings, if your
2632 switches take a long time to go into backup mode, it may be desirable
2633 to not activate a backup interface immediately after a link goes down.
2634 Failover may be delayed via the downdelay bonding module option.
2635 
2636 13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets
2637 --------------------------------
2638 
2639 NOTE: Starting with version 3.0.2, the bonding driver has logic to
2640 suppress duplicate packets, which should largely eliminate this problem.
2641 The following description is kept for reference.
2642 
2643 It is not uncommon to observe a short burst of duplicated
2644 traffic when the bonding device is first used, or after it has been
2645 idle for some period of time.  This is most easily observed by issuing
2646 a "ping" to some other host on the network, and noticing that the
2647 output from ping flags duplicates (typically one per slave).
2648 
2649 For example, on a bond in active-backup mode with five slaves
2650 all connected to one switch, the output may appear as follows::
2651 
2652         # ping -n 10.0.4.2
2653         PING 10.0.4.2 (10.0.4.2) from 10.0.3.10 : 56(84) bytes of data.
2654         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.7 ms
2655         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2656         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2657         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2658         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2659         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.216 ms
2660         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.267 ms
2661         64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.222 ms
2662 
2663 This is not due to an error in the bonding driver, rather, it
2664 is a side effect of how many switches update their MAC forwarding
2665 tables.  Initially, the switch does not associate the MAC address in
2666 the packet with a particular switch port, and so it may send the
2667 traffic to all ports until its MAC forwarding table is updated.  Since
2668 the interfaces attached to the bond may occupy multiple ports on a
2669 single switch, when the switch (temporarily) floods the traffic to all
2670 ports, the bond device receives multiple copies of the same packet
2671 (one per slave device).
2672 
2673 The duplicated packet behavior is switch dependent, some
2674 switches exhibit this, and some do not.  On switches that display this
2675 behavior, it can be induced by clearing the MAC forwarding table (on
2676 most Cisco switches, the privileged command "clear mac address-table
2677 dynamic" will accomplish this).
2678 
2679 14. Hardware Specific Considerations
2680 ====================================
2681 
2682 This section contains additional information for configuring
2683 bonding on specific hardware platforms, or for interfacing bonding
2684 with particular switches or other devices.
2685 
2686 14.1 IBM BladeCenter
2687 --------------------
2688 
2689 This applies to the JS20 and similar systems.
2690 
2691 On the JS20 blades, the bonding driver supports only
2692 balance-rr, active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes.  This is
2693 largely due to the network topology inside the BladeCenter, detailed
2694 below.
2695 
2696 JS20 network adapter information
2697 --------------------------------
2698 
2699 All JS20s come with two Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports
2700 integrated on the planar (that's "motherboard" in IBM-speak).  In the
2701 BladeCenter chassis, the eth0 port of all JS20 blades is hard wired to
2702 I/O Module #1; similarly, all eth1 ports are wired to I/O Module #2.
2703 An add-on Broadcom daughter card can be installed on a JS20 to provide
2704 two more Gigabit Ethernet ports.  These ports, eth2 and eth3, are
2705 wired to I/O Modules 3 and 4, respectively.
2706 
2707 Each I/O Module may contain either a switch or a passthrough
2708 module (which allows ports to be directly connected to an external
2709 switch).  Some bonding modes require a specific BladeCenter internal
2710 network topology in order to function; these are detailed below.
2711 
2712 Additional BladeCenter-specific networking information can be
2713 found in two IBM Redbooks (www.ibm.com/redbooks):
2714 
2715 - "IBM eServer BladeCenter Networking Options"
2716 - "IBM eServer BladeCenter Layer 2-7 Network Switching"
2717 
2718 BladeCenter networking configuration
2719 ------------------------------------
2720 
2721 Because a BladeCenter can be configured in a very large number
2722 of ways, this discussion will be confined to describing basic
2723 configurations.
2724 
2725 Normally, Ethernet Switch Modules (ESMs) are used in I/O
2726 modules 1 and 2.  In this configuration, the eth0 and eth1 ports of a
2727 JS20 will be connected to different internal switches (in the
2728 respective I/O modules).
2729 
2730 A passthrough module (OPM or CPM, optical or copper,
2731 passthrough module) connects the I/O module directly to an external
2732 switch.  By using PMs in I/O module #1 and #2, the eth0 and eth1
2733 interfaces of a JS20 can be redirected to the outside world and
2734 connected to a common external switch.
2735 
2736 Depending upon the mix of ESMs and PMs, the network will
2737 appear to bonding as either a single switch topology (all PMs) or as a
2738 multiple switch topology (one or more ESMs, zero or more PMs).  It is
2739 also possible to connect ESMs together, resulting in a configuration
2740 much like the example in "High Availability in a Multiple Switch
2741 Topology," above.
2742 
2743 Requirements for specific modes
2744 -------------------------------
2745 
2746 The balance-rr mode requires the use of passthrough modules
2747 for devices in the bond, all connected to an common external switch.
2748 That switch must be configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking" on the
2749 appropriate ports, as is usual for balance-rr.
2750 
2751 The balance-alb and balance-tlb modes will function with
2752 either switch modules or passthrough modules (or a mix).  The only
2753 specific requirement for these modes is that all network interfaces
2754 must be able to reach all destinations for traffic sent over the
2755 bonding device (i.e., the network must converge at some point outside
2756 the BladeCenter).
2757 
2758 The active-backup mode has no additional requirements.
2759 
2760 Link monitoring issues
2761 ----------------------
2762 
2763 When an Ethernet Switch Module is in place, only the ARP
2764 monitor will reliably detect link loss to an external switch.  This is
2765 nothing unusual, but examination of the BladeCenter cabinet would
2766 suggest that the "external" network ports are the ethernet ports for
2767 the system, when it fact there is a switch between these "external"
2768 ports and the devices on the JS20 system itself.  The MII monitor is
2769 only able to detect link failures between the ESM and the JS20 system.
2770 
2771 When a passthrough module is in place, the MII monitor does
2772 detect failures to the "external" port, which is then directly
2773 connected to the JS20 system.
2774 
2775 Other concerns
2776 --------------
2777 
2778 The Serial Over LAN (SoL) link is established over the primary
2779 ethernet (eth0) only, therefore, any loss of link to eth0 will result
2780 in losing your SoL connection.  It will not fail over with other
2781 network traffic, as the SoL system is beyond the control of the
2782 bonding driver.
2783 
2784 It may be desirable to disable spanning tree on the switch
2785 (either the internal Ethernet Switch Module, or an external switch) to
2786 avoid fail-over delay issues when using bonding.
2787 
2788 
2789 15. Frequently Asked Questions
2790 ==============================
2791 
2792 1.  Is it SMP safe?
2793 -------------------
2794 
2795 Yes. The old 2.0.xx channel bonding patch was not SMP safe.
2796 The new driver was designed to be SMP safe from the start.
2797 
2798 2.  What type of cards will work with it?
2799 -----------------------------------------
2800 
2801 Any Ethernet type cards (you can even mix cards - a Intel
2802 EtherExpress PRO/100 and a 3com 3c905b, for example).  For most modes,
2803 devices need not be of the same speed.
2804 
2805 Starting with version 3.2.1, bonding also supports Infiniband
2806 slaves in active-backup mode.
2807 
2808 3.  How many bonding devices can I have?
2809 ----------------------------------------
2810 
2811 There is no limit.
2812 
2813 4.  How many slaves can a bonding device have?
2814 ----------------------------------------------
2815 
2816 This is limited only by the number of network interfaces Linux
2817 supports and/or the number of network cards you can place in your
2818 system.
2819 
2820 5.  What happens when a slave link dies?
2821 ----------------------------------------
2822 
2823 If link monitoring is enabled, then the failing device will be
2824 disabled.  The active-backup mode will fail over to a backup link, and
2825 other modes will ignore the failed link.  The link will continue to be
2826 monitored, and should it recover, it will rejoin the bond (in whatever
2827 manner is appropriate for the mode). See the sections on High
2828 Availability and the documentation for each mode for additional
2829 information.
2830 
2831 Link monitoring can be enabled via either the miimon or
2832 arp_interval parameters (described in the module parameters section,
2833 above).  In general, miimon monitors the carrier state as sensed by
2834 the underlying network device, and the arp monitor (arp_interval)
2835 monitors connectivity to another host on the local network.
2836 
2837 If no link monitoring is configured, the bonding driver will
2838 be unable to detect link failures, and will assume that all links are
2839 always available.  This will likely result in lost packets, and a
2840 resulting degradation of performance.  The precise performance loss
2841 depends upon the bonding mode and network configuration.
2842 
2843 6.  Can bonding be used for High Availability?
2844 ----------------------------------------------
2845 
2846 Yes.  See the section on High Availability for details.
2847 
2848 7.  Which switches/systems does it work with?
2849 ---------------------------------------------
2850 
2851 The full answer to this depends upon the desired mode.
2852 
2853 In the basic balance modes (balance-rr and balance-xor), it
2854 works with any system that supports etherchannel (also called
2855 trunking).  Most managed switches currently available have such
2856 support, and many unmanaged switches as well.
2857 
2858 The advanced balance modes (balance-tlb and balance-alb) do
2859 not have special switch requirements, but do need device drivers that
2860 support specific features (described in the appropriate section under
2861 module parameters, above).
2862 
2863 In 802.3ad mode, it works with systems that support IEEE
2864 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation.  Most managed and many unmanaged
2865 switches currently available support 802.3ad.
2866 
2867 The active-backup mode should work with any Layer-II switch.
2868 
2869 8.  Where does a bonding device get its MAC address from?
2870 ---------------------------------------------------------
2871 
2872 When using slave devices that have fixed MAC addresses, or when
2873 the fail_over_mac option is enabled, the bonding device's MAC address is
2874 the MAC address of the active slave.
2875 
2876 For other configurations, if not explicitly configured (with
2877 ifconfig or ip link), the MAC address of the bonding device is taken from
2878 its first slave device.  This MAC address is then passed to all following
2879 slaves and remains persistent (even if the first slave is removed) until
2880 the bonding device is brought down or reconfigured.
2881 
2882 If you wish to change the MAC address, you can set it with
2883 ifconfig or ip link::
2884 
2885         # ifconfig bond0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
2886 
2887         # ip link set bond0 address 66:77:88:99:aa:bb
2888 
2889 The MAC address can be also changed by bringing down/up the
2890 device and then changing its slaves (or their order)::
2891 
2892         # ifconfig bond0 down ; modprobe -r bonding
2893         # ifconfig bond0 .... up
2894         # ifenslave bond0 eth...
2895 
2896 This method will automatically take the address from the next
2897 slave that is added.
2898 
2899 To restore your slaves' MAC addresses, you need to detach them
2900 from the bond (``ifenslave -d bond0 eth0``). The bonding driver will
2901 then restore the MAC addresses that the slaves had before they were
2902 enslaved.
2903 
2904 16. Resources and Links
2905 =======================
2906 
2907 The latest version of the bonding driver can be found in the latest
2908 version of the linux kernel, found on http://kernel.org
2909 
2910 The latest version of this document can be found in the latest kernel
2911 source (named Documentation/networking/bonding.rst).
2912 
2913 Discussions regarding the development of the bonding driver take place
2914 on the main Linux network mailing list, hosted at vger.kernel.org. The list
2915 address is:
2916 
2917 netdev@vger.kernel.org
2918 
2919 The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can
2920 be found at:
2921 
2922 http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#netdev