Software projects/OS/Slackware/Advanced usage/Bonding

About bonding

• From Wikipedia:

"Link aggregation describe various methods of combining (aggregating) multiple network connections in parallel to increase throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, and to provide redundancy in case one of the links fails."

• It's not an addition of the bandwidth, it's a combination.

Is it useful on the Pandora ?

• Short answer: not really.
• Long answer: can be useful on very particular cases, like many access to RAM-cached data.
• As always, it's fun and instructive.

ifenslave

• This program has to be compiled. It's in the kernel sources. Will provide it sooner or later.

Kernel

• For now, the kernel have to be recompiled to enable this feature. I will provide one sooner or later.

Module loading

• The kernel module has to be loaded on each bonded Linux device. As root:

modprobe bonding mode=balance-rr miimon=100

Linking two Pandoras

• You need two USB cables and two Pandoras.
• Get the OPs back to the Slackware default network setup.
• Link them together.
• Disable the USB charge on both, as root:

echo 0 > /sys/class/power_supply/twl4030_usb/enable

• Create the bonded interface:

ifconfig bond0 up

• Add the two USB ports to the bond:

ifenslave bond0 usb0
ifenslave bond0 usb1

• Give a fixed IP address to the bond0 of each Pandora, ie:

ifconfig bond0 10.0.0.1 and on the other OP: ifconfig bond0 10.0.0.2