3x100Mbps bonding: works!

[Laurent Itti]

Hi Trent:

> On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Laurent Itti wrote:
> >  65535    1024   9.99       275313      0     225.71
> 
> With a dual channel setup I get 187.83 MB/sec with the same test.  Looks like
> there is definitely diminishing returns setting in.

yes, I see diminishing returns too. But considering that this is my first
netperf command issued ever, and that an additional RTL8139 costs
$7.60 (board) + $0.62 (cat5e cable) + 1/24*$260 (1 port in a switch)=$18.22
I already like the additional 38 Mbps!  (and I was running X on one side,
and ping on the other side through ssh with display on the box running X,
so that may not have been optimal either).

I played more with the bios on the boxes and I am now down to 1 IRQ per
device except that 2 ethernets still share one.  I disabled the VGA IRQ
and I hope that's okay (I have no display in any case).  I think the next
step will be to fool around with the eeprom in the realtek boards and see
if I can somehow make the bios realize that they could go on different
IRQs...

I'll post new (clean) bench results if I can get better ones next time I
try.  Right now I am almost done with fully setting up one box, and I
prepared a partitioning/disk restore floppy, so I think I'll run that
through all nodes.

best,

  -- laurent