75-467: In computer networking , link aggregation is the combining ( aggregating ) of multiple network connections in parallel by any of several methods. Link aggregation increases total throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, and provides redundancy where all but one of the physical links may fail without losing connectivity. A link aggregation group ( LAG ) is the combined collection of physical ports. Other umbrella terms used to describe
150-470: A T-1 or DSL line . Additionally, it is possible to bond multiple cellular links for an aggregated wireless bonded link. Other bonding methodologies reside at lower OSI layers, requiring coordination with telecommunications companies for implementation. Broadband bonding, because it is implemented at higher layers, can be done without this coordination. Commercial implementations of broadband channel bonding include: On 802.11 (Wi-Fi), channel bonding
225-608: A loadable kernel module and the ifenslave (if = [network] interface) user-level control program pre-installed. Donald Becker programmed the original Linux bonding driver. It came into use with the Beowulf cluster patches for the Linux kernel 2.0. Modes for the Linux bonding driver (network interface aggregation modes) are supplied as parameters to the kernel bonding module at load time. They may be given as command-line arguments to
300-756: A protocol stack , often constructed per the OSI model, communications functions are divided up into protocol layers, where each layer leverages the services of the layer below it until the lowest layer controls the hardware that sends information across the media. The use of protocol layering is ubiquitous across the field of computer networking. An important example of a protocol stack is HTTP (the World Wide Web protocol) running over TCP over IP (the Internet protocols) over IEEE 802.11 (the Wi-Fi protocol). This stack
375-431: A 1000BASE-LX (longer, diverse path) for the second link. One path may have a longer propagation time but since most implementations keep a single traffic flow on the same physical link (using a hash of either MAC addresses, IP addresses, or IP/ transport-layer port combinations as index) this doesn't cause problematic out-of-order delivery . Aggregation mismatch refers to not matching the aggregation type on both ends of
450-716: A November 1997 meeting. The group quickly agreed to include an automatic configuration feature which would add in redundancy as well. This became known as Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP). As of 2000, most gigabit channel-bonding schemes used the IEEE standard of link aggregation which was formerly clause 43 of the IEEE 802.3 standard added in March 2000 by the IEEE 802.3ad task force. Nearly every network equipment manufacturer quickly adopted this joint standard over their proprietary standards. The 802.3 maintenance task force report for
525-503: A diverse set of networking capabilities. The protocols have a flat addressing scheme. They operate mostly at layers 1 and 2 of the OSI model. For example, MAC bridging ( IEEE 802.1D ) deals with the routing of Ethernet packets using a Spanning Tree Protocol . IEEE 802.1Q describes VLANs , and IEEE 802.1X defines a port-based network access control protocol, which forms the basis for the authentication mechanisms used in VLANs (but it
600-440: A large, congested network into an aggregation of smaller, more efficient networks. A router is an internetworking device that forwards packets between networks by processing the addressing or routing information included in the packet. The routing information is often processed in conjunction with the routing table . A router uses its routing table to determine where to forward packets and does not require broadcasting packets which
675-415: A link use the same aggregation method, but has performance advantages over the latter. Channel bonding is differentiated from load balancing in that load balancing divides traffic between network interfaces on per network socket (layer 4) basis, while channel bonding implies a division of traffic between physical interfaces at a lower level, either per packet (layer 3) or a data link (layer 2) basis. By
750-440: A multi-port bridge. Switches normally have numerous ports, facilitating a star topology for devices, and for cascading additional switches. Bridges and switches operate at the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model and bridge traffic between two or more network segments to form a single local network. Both are devices that forward frames of data between ports based on the destination MAC address in each frame. They learn
825-457: A repeater hub assists with collision detection and fault isolation for the network. Hubs and repeaters in LANs have been largely obsoleted by modern network switches. Network bridges and network switches are distinct from a hub in that they only forward frames to the ports involved in the communication whereas a hub forwards to all ports. Bridges only have two ports but a switch can be thought of as
SECTION 10
#1732802605877900-418: A single failure can cause the network to fail entirely. In general, the more interconnections there are, the more robust the network is; but the more expensive it is to install. Therefore, most network diagrams are arranged by their network topology which is the map of logical interconnections of network hosts. Common topologies are: The physical layout of the nodes in a network may not necessarily reflect
975-591: A stack, preventing any single point of failure and additionally allowing all switches to be load balanced across multiple aggregation switches from the single access stack. These devices synchronize state across an Inter-Switch Trunk (IST) such that they appear to the connecting (access) device to be a single device (switch block) and prevent any packet duplication. SMLT provides enhanced resiliency with sub-second failover and sub-second recovery for all speed trunks while operating transparently to end-devices. Multi-chassis link aggregation group provides similar features in
1050-403: A standard voice telephone line. Modems are still commonly used for telephone lines, using a digital subscriber line technology and cable television systems using DOCSIS technology. A firewall is a network device or software for controlling network security and access rules. Firewalls are inserted in connections between secure internal networks and potentially insecure external networks such as
1125-877: A transmission medium. Power line communication uses a building's power cabling to transmit data. The following classes of wired technologies are used in computer networking. Network connections can be established wirelessly using radio or other electromagnetic means of communication. The last two cases have a large round-trip delay time , which gives slow two-way communication but does not prevent sending large amounts of information (they can have high throughput). Apart from any physical transmission media, networks are built from additional basic system building blocks, such as network interface controllers , repeaters , hubs , bridges , switches , routers , modems, and firewalls . Any particular piece of equipment will frequently contain multiple building blocks and so may perform multiple functions. A network interface controller (NIC)
1200-510: A typical port-cable-port connection, in either a computer-to-switch or a switch-to-switch configuration: the cable itself or either of the ports the cable is plugged into can fail. Multiple logical connections can be made, but many of the higher level protocols were not designed to fail over completely seamlessly. Combining multiple physical connections into one logical connection using link aggregation provides more resilient communications. Network architects can implement aggregation at any of
1275-406: A variety of network topologies . The nodes of a computer network can include personal computers , servers , networking hardware , or other specialized or general-purpose hosts . They are identified by network addresses and may have hostnames . Hostnames serve as memorable labels for the nodes and are rarely changed after initial assignment. Network addresses serve for locating and identifying
1350-495: A variety of different sources, primarily to support circuit-switched digital telephony . However, due to its protocol neutrality and transport-oriented features, SONET/SDH also was the obvious choice for transporting Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) frames. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a switching technique for telecommunication networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing and encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells . This differs from other protocols such as
1425-424: A vendor-nonspecific manner. To the connected device, the connection appears as a normal link aggregated trunk. The coordination between the multiple sources involved is handled in a vendor-specific manner. In most implementations, all the ports used in an aggregation consist of the same physical type, such as all copper ports (10/100/1000BASE‑T), all multi-mode fiber ports, or all single-mode fiber ports. However, all
1500-657: A virtual system of links that run on top of the Internet . Overlay networks have been used since the early days of networking, back when computers were connected via telephone lines using modems, even before data networks were developed. The most striking example of an overlay network is the Internet itself. The Internet itself was initially built as an overlay on the telephone network . Even today, each Internet node can communicate with virtually any other through an underlying mesh of sub-networks of wildly different topologies and technologies. Address resolution and routing are
1575-522: Is computer hardware that connects the computer to the network media and has the ability to process low-level network information. For example, the NIC may have a connector for plugging in a cable, or an aerial for wireless transmission and reception, and the associated circuitry. In Ethernet networks, each NIC has a unique Media Access Control (MAC) address —usually stored in the controller's permanent memory. To avoid address conflicts between network devices,
SECTION 20
#17328026058771650-422: Is a virtual network that is built on top of another network. Nodes in the overlay network are connected by virtual or logical links. Each link corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in the underlying network. The topology of the overlay network may (and often does) differ from that of the underlying one. For example, many peer-to-peer networks are overlay networks. They are organized as nodes of
1725-516: Is also found in WLANs ) – it is what the home user sees when the user has to enter a "wireless access key". Ethernet is a family of technologies used in wired LANs. It is described by a set of standards together called IEEE 802.3 published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Wireless LAN based on the IEEE 802.11 standards, also widely known as WLAN or WiFi, is probably
1800-478: Is an electronic device that receives a network signal , cleans it of unnecessary noise and regenerates it. The signal is retransmitted at a higher power level, or to the other side of obstruction so that the signal can cover longer distances without degradation. In most twisted-pair Ethernet configurations, repeaters are required for cable that runs longer than 100 meters. With fiber optics, repeaters can be tens or even hundreds of kilometers apart. Repeaters work on
1875-517: Is approximated by sending all frames associated with a particular session across the same link. Common implementations use L2 or L3 hashes (i.e. based on the MAC or the IP addresses), ensuring that the same flow is always sent via the same physical link. However, this may not provide even distribution across the links in the trunk when only a single or very few pairs of hosts communicate with each other, i.e. when
1950-412: Is inefficient for very big networks. Modems (modulator-demodulator) are used to connect network nodes via wire not originally designed for digital network traffic, or for wireless. To do this one or more carrier signals are modulated by the digital signal to produce an analog signal that can be tailored to give the required properties for transmission. Early modems modulated audio signals sent over
2025-404: Is not sending packets, the link can be filled with packets from other users, and so the cost can be shared, with relatively little interference, provided the link is not overused. Often the route a packet needs to take through a network is not immediately available. In that case, the packet is queued and waits until a link is free. The physical link technologies of packet networks typically limit
2100-403: Is the process of selecting network paths to carry network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including circuit switching networks and packet switched networks. IEEE 802.3 IEEE 802.3 is a working group and a collection of standards defining the physical layer and data link layer 's media access control (MAC) of wired Ethernet . The standards are produced by
2175-459: Is used between the wireless router and the home user's personal computer when the user is surfing the web. There are many communication protocols, a few of which are described below. The Internet protocol suite , also called TCP/IP, is the foundation of all modern networking. It offers connection-less and connection-oriented services over an inherently unreliable network traversed by datagram transmission using Internet protocol (IP). At its core,
2250-471: Is used in Super G technology, referred to as 108 Mbit/s. It bonds two channels of standard 802.11g , which has 54 Mbit/s data signaling rate per channel. On IEEE 802.11n , a mode with a channel width of 40 MHz is specified. This is not channel bonding, but a single channel with double the older 20 MHz channel width, thus using two adjacent 20 MHz bands. This allows direct doubling of
2325-429: The *BSD lagg package, Linux bonding driver, Solaris dladm aggr , etc. – exist for many operating systems. The Linux bonding driver provides a method for aggregating multiple network interface controllers (NICs) into a single logical bonded interface of two or more so-called (NIC) slaves . The majority of modern Linux distributions come with a Linux kernel which has the Linux bonding driver integrated as
Link aggregation - Misplaced Pages Continue
2400-462: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) maintains and administers MAC address uniqueness. The size of an Ethernet MAC address is six octets . The three most significant octets are reserved to identify NIC manufacturers. These manufacturers, using only their assigned prefixes, uniquely assign the three least-significant octets of every Ethernet interface they produce. A repeater
2475-477: The World Wide Web , digital video and audio , shared use of application and storage servers , printers and fax machines , and use of email and instant messaging applications. Computer networking may be considered a branch of computer science , computer engineering , and telecommunications , since it relies on the theoretical and practical application of the related disciplines. Computer networking
2550-404: The insmod or modprobe commands, but are usually specified in a Linux distribution-specific configuration file. The behavior of the single logical bonded interface depends upon its specified bonding driver mode. The default parameter is balance-rr. The Linux Team driver provides an alternative to bonding driver. The main difference is that Team driver kernel part contains only essential code and
2625-476: The 9th revision project in November 2006 noted that certain 802.1 layers (such as 802.1X security) were positioned in the protocol stack below link aggregation which was defined as an 802.3 sublayer. To resolve this discrepancy, the 802.3ax (802.1AX) task force was formed, resulting in the formal transfer of the protocol to the 802.1 group with the publication of IEEE 802.1AX-2008 on 3 November 2008. Within
2700-587: The DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 specifications for data over cable TV systems, multiple channels may be bonded. Under DOCSIS 3.0, up to 32 downstream and 8 upstream channels may be bonded. These are typically 6 or 8 MHz wide. DOCSIS 3.1 defines more complicated arrangements involving aggregation at the level of subcarriers and larger notional channels. Broadband bonding is a type of channel bonding that refers to aggregation of multiple channels at OSI layers at level four or above. Channels bonded can be wired links such as
2775-605: The IEEE Ethernet standards, the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) provides a method to control the bundling of several physical links together to form a single logical link. LACP allows a network device to negotiate an automatic bundling of links by sending LACP packets to their peer, a directly connected device that also implements LACP. LACP Features and practical examples LACP works by sending frames (LACPDUs) down all links that have
2850-406: The IEEE standard requires is that each link be full duplex and all of them have an identical speed (10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000 Mbit/s). Many switches are PHY independent, meaning that a switch could have a mixture of copper, SX, LX, LX10 or other GBIC / SFP modular transceivers. While maintaining the same PHY is the usual approach, it is possible to aggregate a 1000BASE-SX fiber for one link and
2925-440: The Internet protocol suite or Ethernet that use variable-sized packets or frames . ATM has similarities with both circuit and packet switched networking. This makes it a good choice for a network that must handle both traditional high-throughput data traffic, and real-time, low-latency content such as voice and video. ATM uses a connection-oriented model in which a virtual circuit must be established between two endpoints before
3000-574: The Internet. Firewalls are typically configured to reject access requests from unrecognized sources while allowing actions from recognized ones. The vital role firewalls play in network security grows in parallel with the constant increase in cyber attacks . A communication protocol is a set of rules for exchanging information over a network. Communication protocols have various characteristics. They may be connection-oriented or connectionless , they may use circuit mode or packet switching, and they may use hierarchical addressing or flat addressing. In
3075-413: The NIC is supported by the kernel, can deal with NICs from different manufacturers or using different drivers. Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX have native support for link aggregation. XenServer offers both static LAGs as well as LACP. vSphere 5.1 (ESXi) supports both static LAGs and LACP natively with their virtual distributed switch. Microsoft's Hyper-V does not offer link aggregation support from
Link aggregation - Misplaced Pages Continue
3150-628: The OSI model can use round-robin scheduling , hash values computed from fields in the packet header, or a combination of these two methods. Regardless of the layer on which aggregation occurs, it is possible to balance the network load across all links. However, in order to avoid out-of-order delivery , not all implementations take advantage of this. Most methods provide failover as well. Combining can either occur such that multiple interfaces share one logical address (i.e. IP) or one physical address (i.e. MAC address), or it allows each interface to have its own address. The former requires that both ends of
3225-532: The PHY data rate from a single 20 MHz channel. Computer networking A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes . Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are made up of telecommunication network technologies based on physically wired, optical , and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in
3300-627: The actual data exchange begins. ATM still plays a role in the last mile , which is the connection between an Internet service provider and the home user. There are a number of different digital cellular standards, including: Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), cdmaOne , CDMA2000 , Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO), Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), Digital AMPS (IS-136/TDMA), and Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN). Routing
3375-509: The aggregate bandwidth of the bonded links than can throughput under routing schemes which simply load-balance outgoing network connections over the links. Similarly, multiple DSL lines can be bonded to give higher bandwidth; in the United Kingdom , ADSL is sometimes bonded to give for example 512 kbit/s upload bandwidth and 4 megabit/s download bandwidth, in areas that only have access to 2 megabit/s bandwidth. Under
3450-468: The association of physical ports to MAC addresses by examining the source addresses of received frames and only forward the frame when necessary. If an unknown destination MAC is targeted, the device broadcasts the request to all ports except the source, and discovers the location from the reply. Bridges and switches divide the network's collision domain but maintain a single broadcast domain. Network segmentation through bridging and switching helps break down
3525-627: The concept include trunking , bundling , bonding , channeling or teaming . Implementation may follow vendor-independent standards such as Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) for Ethernet , defined in IEEE 802.1AX or the previous IEEE 802.3ad , but also proprietary protocols . Link aggregation increases the bandwidth and resilience of Ethernet connections. Bandwidth requirements do not scale linearly. Ethernet bandwidths historically have increased tenfold each generation: 10 megabit /s, 100 Mbit/s, 1000 Mbit/s, 10,000 Mbit/s. If one started to bump into bandwidth ceilings, then
3600-660: The configured links. In passive mode, LACPDUs are not sent until one is received from the other side, a speak-when-spoken-to protocol. In addition to the IEEE link aggregation substandards, there are a number of proprietary aggregation schemes including Cisco's EtherChannel and Port Aggregation Protocol , Juniper's Aggregated Ethernet, AVAYA's Multi-Link Trunking , Split Multi-Link Trunking , Routed Split Multi-Link Trunking and Distributed Split Multi-Link Trunking , ZTE's Smartgroup, Huawei's Eth-Trunk, and Connectify 's Speedify. Most high-end network devices support some form of link aggregation. Software-based implementations – such as
3675-429: The delivery of frames across the network interfaces in the same manner that I/O is striped across disks in a RAID 0 array. For this reason, some discussions of channel bonding also refer to Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes (RAIN) or to redundant array of independent network interfaces . In analog modems, multiple dial-up links over POTS may be bonded. Throughput over such bonded connections can come closer to
3750-470: The feature within their device driver software. Intel , for example, released Advanced Networking Services (ANS) to bond Intel Fast Ethernet and Gigabit cards. Nvidia supports teaming with their Nvidia Network Access Manager/Firewall Tool. HP has a teaming tool for HP-branded NICs which supports several modes of link aggregation including 802.3ad with LACP. In addition, there is a basic layer-3 aggregation that allows servers with multiple IP interfaces on
3825-451: The hashes provide too little variation. It effectively limits the client bandwidth in aggregate. In the extreme, one link is fully loaded while the others are completely idle and aggregate bandwidth is limited to this single member's maximum bandwidth. For this reason, an even load balancing and full utilization of all trunked links is almost never reached in real-life implementations. NICs trunked together can also provide network links beyond
SECTION 50
#17328026058773900-920: The hypervisor level, but the above-mentioned methods for teaming under Windows apply to Hyper-V. With the modes balance-rr , balance-xor , broadcast and 802.3ad , all physical ports in the link aggregation group must reside on the same logical switch, which, in most common scenarios, will leave a single point of failure when the physical switch to which all links are connected goes offline. The modes active-backup , balance-tlb , and balance-alb can also be set up with two or more switches. But after failover (like all other modes), in some cases, active sessions may fail (due to ARP problems) and have to be restarted. However, almost all vendors have proprietary extensions that resolve some of this issue: they aggregate multiple physical switches into one logical switch. Nortel's split multi-link trunking (SMLT) protocol allows multiple Ethernet links to be split across multiple switches in
3975-512: The link. Some switches do not implement the 802.1AX standard but support static configuration of link aggregation. Therefore, link aggregation between similarly statically configured switches may work but will fail between a statically configured switch and a device that is configured for LACP. On Ethernet interfaces, channel bonding requires assistance from both the Ethernet switch and the host computer's operating system , which must stripe
4050-668: The literature as the physical medium ) used to link devices to form a computer network include electrical cable , optical fiber , and free space. In the OSI model , the software to handle the media is defined at layers 1 and 2 — the physical layer and the data link layer. A widely adopted family that uses copper and fiber media in local area network (LAN) technology are collectively known as Ethernet. The media and protocol standards that enable communication between networked devices over Ethernet are defined by IEEE 802.3 . Wireless LAN standards use radio waves , others use infrared signals as
4125-569: The lowest three layers of the OSI model . Examples of aggregation at layer 1 ( physical layer ) include power line (e.g. IEEE 1901 ) and wireless (e.g. IEEE 802.11) network devices that combine multiple frequency bands. OSI layer 2 ( data link layer , e.g. Ethernet frame in LANs or multi-link PPP in WANs, Ethernet MAC address ) aggregation typically occurs across switch ports, which can be either physical ports or virtual ones managed by an operating system. Aggregation at layer 3 ( network layer ) in
4200-665: The means that allow mapping of a fully connected IP overlay network to its underlying network. Another example of an overlay network is a distributed hash table , which maps keys to nodes in the network. In this case, the underlying network is an IP network, and the overlay network is a table (actually a map ) indexed by keys. Overlay networks have also been proposed as a way to improve Internet routing, such as through quality of service guarantees achieve higher-quality streaming media . Previous proposals such as IntServ , DiffServ , and IP multicast have not seen wide acceptance largely because they require modification of all routers in
4275-403: The mid-1990s, most network switch manufacturers had included aggregation capability as a proprietary extension to increase bandwidth between their switches. Each manufacturer developed its own method, which led to compatibility problems. The IEEE 802.3 working group took up a study group to create an interoperable link layer standard (i.e. encompassing the physical and data-link layers both) in
4350-415: The most well-known member of the IEEE 802 protocol family for home users today. IEEE 802.11 shares many properties with wired Ethernet. Synchronous optical networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized multiplexing protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams over optical fiber using lasers. They were originally designed to transport circuit mode communications from
4425-665: The network increases, without having to replace everything and deploy new hardware. Most backbone installations install more cabling or fiber optic pairs than is initially necessary. This is done because labor costs are higher than the cost of the cable, and running extra cable reduces future labor costs if networking needs change. Link aggregation can allow the use of these extra cables to increase backbone speeds for little or no extra cost if ports are available. When balancing traffic, network administrators often wish to avoid reordering Ethernet frames. For example, TCP suffers additional overhead when dealing with out-of-order packets. This goal
4500-412: The network needs to deliver the user data, for example, source and destination network addresses , error detection codes, and sequencing information. Typically, control information is found in packet headers and trailers , with payload data in between. With packets, the bandwidth of the transmission medium can be better shared among users than if the network were circuit switched . When one user
4575-420: The network topology. As an example, with FDDI , the network topology is a ring, but the physical topology is often a star, because all neighboring connections can be routed via a central physical location. Physical layout is not completely irrelevant, however, as common ducting and equipment locations can represent single points of failure due to issues like fires, power failures and flooding. An overlay network
SECTION 60
#17328026058774650-729: The network. On the other hand, an overlay network can be incrementally deployed on end-hosts running the overlay protocol software, without cooperation from Internet service providers . The overlay network has no control over how packets are routed in the underlying network between two overlay nodes, but it can control, for example, the sequence of overlay nodes that a message traverses before it reaches its destination . For example, Akamai Technologies manages an overlay network that provides reliable, efficient content delivery (a kind of multicast ). Academic research includes end system multicast, resilient routing and quality of service studies, among others. The transmission media (often referred to in
4725-494: The nodes by communication protocols such as the Internet Protocol . Computer networks may be classified by many criteria, including the transmission medium used to carry signals, bandwidth , communications protocols to organize network traffic , the network size, the topology, traffic control mechanisms, and organizational intent. Computer networks support many applications and services , such as access to
4800-440: The only option was to move to the next generation, which could be cost prohibitive. An alternative solution, introduced by many of the network manufacturers in the early 1990s, is to use link aggregation to combine two physical Ethernet links into one logical link. Most of these early solutions required manual configuration and identical equipment on both sides of the connection. There are three single points of failure inherent to
4875-464: The physical layer of the OSI model but still require a small amount of time to regenerate the signal. This can cause a propagation delay that affects network performance and may affect proper function. As a result, many network architectures limit the number of repeaters used in a network, e.g., the Ethernet 5-4-3 rule . An Ethernet repeater with multiple ports is known as an Ethernet hub . In addition to reconditioning and distributing network signals,
4950-419: The protocol enabled. If it finds a device on the other end of a link that also has LACP enabled, that device will independently send frames along the same links in the opposite direction enabling the two units to detect multiple links between themselves and then combine them into a single logical link. LACP can be configured in one of two modes: active or passive. In active mode, LACPDUs are sent 1 per second along
5025-456: The protocol suite defines the addressing, identification, and routing specifications for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and for IPv6 , the next generation of the protocol with a much enlarged addressing capability. The Internet protocol suite is the defining set of protocols for the Internet. IEEE 802 is a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and metropolitan area networks. The complete IEEE 802 protocol suite provides
5100-400: The rest of the code (link validation, LACP implementation, decision making, etc.) is run in userspace as a part of teamd daemon. Link aggregation offers an inexpensive way to set up a high-capacity backbone network that transfers multiple times more data than any single port or device can deliver. Link aggregation also allows the network's backbone speed to grow incrementally as demand on
5175-445: The same network to perform load balancing, and for home users with more than one internet connection, to increase connection speed by sharing the load on all interfaces. Broadcom offers advanced functions via Broadcom Advanced Control Suite (BACS), via which the teaming functionality of BASP (Broadcom Advanced Server Program) is available, offering 802.3ad static LAGs, LACP, and "smart teaming" which doesn't require any configuration on
5250-515: The sharing of files and information, giving authorized users access to data stored on other computers. Distributed computing leverages resources from multiple computers across a network to perform tasks collaboratively. Most modern computer networks use protocols based on packet-mode transmission. A network packet is a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-switched network . Packets consist of two types of data: control information and user data (payload). The control information provides data
5325-493: The size of packets to a certain maximum transmission unit (MTU). A longer message may be fragmented before it is transferred and once the packets arrive, they are reassembled to construct the original message. The physical or geographic locations of network nodes and links generally have relatively little effect on a network, but the topology of interconnections of a network can significantly affect its throughput and reliability. With many technologies, such as bus or star networks,
5400-403: The switches to work. It is possible to configure teaming with BACS with a mix of NICs from different vendors as long as at least one of them is from Broadcom and the other NICs have the required capabilities to support teaming. Linux , FreeBSD , NetBSD , OpenBSD , macOS , OpenSolaris and commercial Unix distributions such as AIX implement Ethernet bonding at a higher level and, as long as
5475-479: The throughput of any one single NIC. For example, this allows a central file server to establish an aggregate 2-gigabit connection using two 1-gigabit NICs teamed together. Note the data signaling rate will still be 1 Gbit/s, which can be misleading depending on methodologies used to test throughput after link aggregation is employed. Microsoft Windows Server 2012 supports link aggregation natively. Previous Windows Server versions relied on manufacturer support of
5550-437: The working group of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). This is generally a local area network (LAN) technology with some wide area network (WAN) applications. Physical connections are made between nodes and/or infrastructure devices ( hubs , switches , routers ) by various types of copper or fiber cable . 802.3 is a technology that supports the IEEE 802.1 network architecture. 802.3 also defines
5625-462: Was influenced by a wide array of technological developments and historical milestones. Computer networks enhance how users communicate with each other by using various electronic methods like email, instant messaging, online chat, voice and video calls, and video conferencing. Networks also enable the sharing of computing resources. For example, a user can print a document on a shared printer or use shared storage devices. Additionally, networks allow for
#876123