Teaming Network Cards

[SimonD]

Hi there...we have a server that has two network cards within it. The plan was that one would be a back up encase the primary fails - but both are active and send data out.

Recently talking to our ISP, he mentioned that it is possible in HP servers to "team Adapters", so that one sits and does nothing until the primary fails, and then it takes over.

This way, our ISP only needs to configure 1 IP address for our firewall.

Has anyone heard of this? If so, can they advise if they know of any problems this may cause. Also, where would this configuration be made, as I have been into the hardware settings for the cards and not found anything that looks like the setting to adjust.

Many thanks - and have a great day

Simon

[Guest]

Welcome aboard the board, Simon ..

I've heard of the situation, dunno about it though...lemme look up some info for ya though

[Tinker]

I just tested my system which has 2 NICs. One is on the Mother Board and the other is in an PCI slot. I plugged both into a Linksys cable\router which is hooked to my cable modem. On reboot the DHCP assigned each card an address from the local network. With both NICs active I unplugged the NIC that was in use by the system. The system responded by looking for another path and found the second NIC reconnected and went on about it's work. When the first NIC was reconnected the system disconnected from the back up NIC and went back to the primary NIC.

Now there is only one IP from the ISP, however the weak link here is the router or the cable modem and of course the ISP.

I am also using PCI bus mastering which may also have some bearing on the operation as described above. At any rate here is an idea for NIC failure and a backup to it.

The router is a 4 port and you can pick one up around here (Indiana U.S.A.) for about $50 and the PCI NIC that works with bus mastering for about $20..

I have a cable line and it has toped out at 2 Mbps to date. This set up should be good for 10 Mbps as most modems are only good for 10 Mbps at this time. If you have a connection that is greater than T2 this will not work for you with the equipment listed.

[Guest]

Nice j0b Tinker

[SimonD]

Thanks very much Tinker for your commments (and experiements). All noted and taken on board

Simon

[Guest Toaster]

Hello MSFN Crew !

We do this all the time with our Compaq servers.

You team all the physical NICs together, and the Compaq teaming driver creates a virtual NIC that you set your IP address on, etc.

You can set them either to load balance or to fail over on fault.

Pretty handy and works well - but for best fault tolerance make sure your NICs go to different switches/hubs.

[LS_Dragons]

Is this "teaming" the same as "bridging"??? What exactly is Bridging? Any experts with a simple description out there?

LS

[Guest Toaster]

No network bridging is different - example, if you have a network of two PCs connected by cat5 ethernet cable and one of them also has a wireless card, you can use that PC as a network bridge so the other one can connect through it to the wireless network.

Don't confuse this with a piece of hardware called a network bridge, which is used to reduce the amount of collisions on a LAN segment.

Hope that makes sense.