Knowledge Base

If you need a 2gbps NIC, you need to bond dual 1gbps NICs. It is done using the following way.

1. For your eth0 and eth1 (or whatever your 2 nics are named), you will put the following:
 

Code:

DEVICE=eth#
HWADDR=NIC HW address goes here
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=no
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

Obviously change the eth# to eth0, eth1, or whatever the nic name is and change the HWADDR line to the correct hw addr of the NIC.

2. Now we need to create the ifcfg-bond0 file using the following command:

Code:

touch /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0

3. Open up the newly created bond0 file and put the following into it:
 

Code:

DEVICE=bond0
IPADDR="1.1.1.1"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
GATEWAY="1.1.1.1"
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=no
BONDING_OPTS="miimon=80 mode=4 xmit_hash_policy=layer3+4"

Replace the IP, netmask and gateway with your respective values. Save and restart network: 

Code:

/etc/init.d/network reload

You should now be running on a bonded nic. You can check using the ifconfig command and will see bond0 with the primary IP.

Note: If you are running intel nics, it is a smart idea to add the following to the /etc/grub.conf kernel line, at the end:
 

Code:

pcie_aspm=off

Then save and reboot the server. This will ensure that the NICs won't fall asleep.

Need to setup bonding on a Debian/Ubuntu server? No problem, Go here.