My Cloud: Supported Network Card Link Aggregation Modes

Link Aggregation

The process of adding two or more Ethernet connections together so that they act as one connection increasing throughput to more than what a single connection can do. This type of connection also has redundancy, so if one Ethernet port/cable fails to work, the other connection(s) will still be active.

My Cloud products with more than one Network Interface Card (NIC) have several link aggregation modes:

• Round Robin
  Provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
  It transmits data on all available ports in sequential order but receives data on any available port. The data at the destination may be received out of order and will need to be assembled in the correct order. This can slow throughput as the data is reassembled at the destination location.


• Active Backup (default setting)
  Provides fault tolerance only.
  Only one NIC is used while any other NIC is held in reserve until the primary NIC fails, then it will take over.


• Balance XOR
  Provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
  Data is transmitted based on the source MAC addresses with a logic XOR using the destination MAC address. This sets it so that the same NIC will always be used for each destination.


• Broadcast
  Provides fault tolerance.
  Data is transmitted on all network connections.


• 802.3ad
  Also called IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation or LACP.
  The aggregation method creates groups of NICs with identical speed and duplex settings.


• Adaptive Transmit Load Balancing
  Data transmission is distributed across similar NICs and data is received by a single designated NIC. If the receiving NIC fails, a new NIC takes over its place and assumes its MAC address.


• Adaptive Load Balancing
  Provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
  Uses ARP negotiation to load balance. This technology is recommended to have each NIC plugged into a different network switch.


• OFF
  Two separately configurable NICs