Two different NICs for channel bonding?

[Bogdan Costescu]

On 2 Apr 2001, Camm Maguire wrote:

> Greetings!  We have an established 16-node beowulf using Intel
> EtherExpressPro 100 NICs.  Contrary to the lore regarding problems
> with this card, all works very well here.  We'd like to add a second
> channel to the beowulf. ...

The bonding module does not limit in any way which NICs/drivers work
together. However, generally speaking, bonding works best with two or more
NICs of the same type because of hardware/driver characteristics which
influence latency and bandwidth; because of this, for example, packets can
arrive at the destination out-of-order, so the upper layers need to do
some more work. This might be more important if you plan to run MPI jobs
over the bonded NICs than if you just use bonding in a file server.
Probably the same applies to the switch.

Sincerely,

Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu at IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De