Freenas - 2 nics - some suggestions

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matlock

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Mar 2, 2012
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Hey all:
I've installed a second nic... and i'm not really sure what to do with it =)

I want to setup Link Aggregation : LACP - but if I did my research correctly I need a switch that supports Link Aggregation aswell? In which case my TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND does not support Link Aggregation.

So is a switch that supports Ling Aggregation required for all formats (LACP, FEC, Load Balance... etc) ?

If setting up link aggregation is not an option because of the switch- what other options uses are there for this second nic ?

THANKS-
MATLOCK
 

jgreco

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Link aggregation is kind of sucky for small scale uses, and generally requires a switch that supports it anyways. The alternative also sucks for small scale uses: you can set up a second network. This is probably only really useful if you have one machine that accesses the NAS heavily and several that don't, or some other use scenario that involves being able to somehow take advantage of two independent storage networks.
 

cyberjock

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Your best option(what I do at home with my dual NIC) is let the 2 ports get different IPs. Then on your different computers setup the file shares using the IP addresses and not the machine name. This allows you to attempt to distribute the load evenly.

My configuration has 3 home PCs. My main desktop where I do alot of my copying to and from the server uses one port, and my laptop and HTPC share the other.
 

jgreco

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You're using DHCP to get two different IP addresses on the same network?

While you can set up what you suggest, and traffic inbound might even do what you expect, for outbound traffic, FreeBSD's IP stack bases interface selection on the target network, and so one of your interfaces will be considered the gateway onto the local ethernet segment. If you look at "netstat -r", you will see what it has selected for outbound traffic. It doesn't care what IP address happens to be assigned to that interface, for purposes of output, it'll put all traffic bound for that network onto that network interface.

That's why to accomplish the sort of setup you're suggesting, you need to set up two separate networks.
 

cyberjock

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Jgreco is correct. I find that generally you won't ever max out your server input and output. I'm the one that organizes and move files at home. Since I do all of the organizing, I don't normally do a read and write operation to the server at the same time, so that limitation doesn't generally cause problems for me.

Of course, if you do intend to do high speed reads and writes simultaneously, then your only option is to make a separate network.

A friends' FreeNAS server has 2 NICs, and we have his setup with 1 NIC for his home LAN, and the other is a direct connection to his main desktop. Since he does 99% of his moves/copies to/from the server from that one machine, dedicating 1 line to that one machine worked out very well for him.
 
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