Re: Multiple NICs with Monolithic kernel

[Michael West <quagly@mitzit.net>]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 04:56:10AM +1100, Russell Shaw wrote:
> Michael West wrote:
> >On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 11:41:30PM +1100, Russell Shaw wrote:
> >     Seperate cables to not mean seperate nets.  
> >     In my case they were all going into the same hub.
> 
> I haven't used hubs before. Do all the input and output ports
> have the same IP address? Can you do that on a pc?
> 
     hub and switch ports do not have ip addresses.  
     hubs do not even know what an ip address is. 

     Here is a pretty picture of the OCI model which shows this

     http://www.howstuffworks.com/lan-switch7.htm

     Hubs just get packets from one interface to another on a network
     segment.  Hubs work by broadcasting the packets to all interfaces
     connected to the hub, they only need a physical connection and so
     are at OCI level 1.  Switches inspect the ip infomation and route
     the packets to the correct interface, they operate at OCI level 2.
     Routers can also connect different network segments perform 
     firewalling/NAT/port forwarding packet mangling, and general TCP
     stuff and so use OCI level 3.  

     I believe it is possible to have two cards with the same ip for
     redundancy/performance, but I expect it takes some special setup.  

     Also you can stripe ( think raid ) across two cards.  This is
     called channel bonding.  

     http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonding/