Experiences w/ D-Link DFE-570TX + loadbalancing?

Brian Leeper qaz@doubled.com
Mon Oct 11 23:49:02 1999


On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Marcus Freudeberg wrote:

> Ethernet card and alpha-linux. Is it possible to do real load
> sharing/balancing amoung the 4 ports of this card? Is there any software to

For incoming traffic, you may be able to assign a separate IP address to
each of the 4 ports and have the upstream router configured to route
packets destined for your machine to all 4 IP addresses. Essentially this
would split the incoming traffic load among all 4 ports. 

For outgoing traffic, a similar thing can be done as long as you are using
a 2.2.x series kernel--2.0.x didn't support this. 

Basically you'd add a route for each of the 4 ports and the kernel will
divide outgoing traffic among the 4 ports (you may have to use special
options on the route command to enable this, not sure)

I've never tried this myself, so I have no idea how well it works.

Brian