How many NIC bonding modes are available?

Hello, friend!

The following binding modes are available for common NICs:

• Active-backup: applies to scenarios where two network ports are to be bound. This mode provides high reliability. The bandwidth of the bound port in this mode equals to that of a member port.

• Round-robin: applies to scenarios where two or more network ports are to be bound. The bandwidth of the bound port in this mode is higher than that of a member port, because the member ports share workloads in sequence.

  This mode may result in data packet disorder because traffic is evenly sent to each port. Therefore, MAC address-based load balancing prevails over Round-robin in load sharing mode.

• IP address and port-based load balancing: applies to scenarios where two or more network ports are to be bound. The bandwidth of the bound port in this mode is higher than that of a member port, because the member ports share workloads based on the IP address and port-based load sharing algorithm.

  Source-destination-port-based load balancing algorithm: When the packets contain IP addresses and ports, the member ports share workloads based on the source and destination IP addresses, ports, and MAC addresses. When the packets contain only IP addresses, the member ports share workloads based on the IP addresses and MAC addresses. When the packets contain only MAC addresses, the member ports share workloads based on the MAC addresses.

• MAC address-based load balancing: applies to scenarios where two or more network ports are to be bound. The bandwidth of the bound port in this mode is higher than that of a member port, because the member ports share workloads based on the MAC addresses of the source and destination ports.

  This mode is recommended when most network traffic is on the layer 2 network. This mode allows network traffic to be evenly distributed based on MAC addresses.

• MAC address-based LACP: This mode is developed based on the MAC address-based load balancing mode. In MAC address-based LACP mode, the bound port can automatically detect faults on the link layer and trigger a switchover if a link fails.

• IP address-based LACP: applies to scenarios where two or more network ports are to be bound. The bandwidth of the bound port in this mode is higher than that of a member port, because the member ports share workloads based on the source-destination-IP-address-based load sharing algorithm. When the packets contain IP addresses, the member ports share workloads based on the IP addresses and MAC addresses. When the packets contain only MAC addresses, the member ports share workloads based on the MAC addresses. In this mode, the bound port can also automatically detect faults on the link layer and trigger a switchover if a link fails.

  This mode is recommended when most network traffic goes across layer 3 networks.

• IP address and port-based LACP: applies to scenarios where two or more network ports are to be bound. The bandwidth of the bound port in this mode is higher than that of a member port, because the member ports share workloads based on the IP address and port-based load sharing algorithm. In this mode, the bound port can also automatically detect faults on the link layer and trigger a switchover if a link fails.

Hope this helps!

If your NICs are available for DPDK-driven physical NICs.

• DPDK-driven active/standby: used for the user-mode network port binding. The principle and application scenario are the same as those of Active-backup for common NICs while this can provide better network packet processing than Active-backup.

• DPDK-driven LACP based on the source and destination MAC addresses: used for user-mode network port binding. The principle and application scenario are the same as those of MAC address-based LACP for common NICs while this mode can provide better network packet processing than MAC address-based LACP.

• DPDK-driven LACP based on the source and destination IP addresses and ports: used for user-mode network port binding. The principle and application scenario are the same as those of Source-destination-port-based load balancing algorithm for common NICs while this mode can provide better network packet processing than Source-destination-port-based load balancing algorithm.

Thanks!