Low bandwith on 4-port bond

Storage & Archiving

Low bandwith on 4-port bond

Posted by Adam Lichota on October 14, 2010 at 5:31 am

Hi,

I have tested 2 quad-port Intel Pro/1000 MT PCI-X adapters in two Mac Pros G5 (Leopard 10.5.8), all 4 ports in each Mac bonded and connected port-to-port between Macs but got bandwith same like with 2 ports bonded (220-230 MB/s). It’s ok? For testing I used iperf Thank’s for help

Eric Hansen replied 15 years, 9 months ago 4 Members · 9 Replies
9 Replies

Bob Zelin
October 15, 2010 at 2:09 am

you dont’ get additional speed from bonding between clients. You bond to a server, and the clients get a single connection back to the server. This all happens to a managed switch. You link agg the 4 port card to a managed switch, where you bond 4 ports in the switch (using LACP), and this gives you your pipe. You now run a single cable to the clients (not 2 bonded ports to the client). If you do this correctly, you will get the speed that you want. But not on a PCI-X buss.

The G5 is a boat anchor in 2010.

Bob Zelin
Adam Lichota
October 15, 2010 at 4:36 am

Thanks Bob for your explanation.
Does it mean I can’t use bonds between switch and workstations?
I plan to get bandwith about 200MB/s for each workstation. Will 10Gb adapters resolve my problem? What do you suggest?

Adam Lichota
Mikhail Puzyrev
October 15, 2010 at 9:10 pm

“The G5 is a boat anchor in 2010.”

No, G5 with Scopebox and old Kona or whatever with sdi input -is a nice oscilloscope
Bob Zelin
October 15, 2010 at 9:58 pm

The Scopebox is completely obsolete, now that the $660 Blackmagic Ultrascope is available. And the antique AJA Kona 2 is completely obsolete, now that you can get a brand new AJA Kona LHi for $1209 brand new (and a Blackmagic Decklink SDI for under 300 dollars).

So yes, it is totally obsolete. So are 20 year old cars, and 20 year old TV sets – even if you can watch TV, or drive to the grocery store in them.

Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
October 15, 2010 at 10:02 pm

Adam –
with jumbo frames enabled, you can never get more than 90MB/sec over a single ethernet connection, and as I said, you can’t link aggregate the client to the server – it does not increase the bandwidth. 90MB/sec it is per client with Jumbo frames (and 50 – 60MB/sec without jumbo frames MTU 1500).

If you have a MODERN COMPUTER (not a G5), and you use modern 10 Gig cards from Small Tree or Myricom, you will get 350MB/sec between the client and server using jumbo frames (and about 250MB/sec without jumbo frames). Of course, this is VERY EXPENSIVE.

https://www.small-tree.com/6_Port_Fiber_82599_PCIe_10_Gb_Adapter_p/petg6sfp+.htm

Bob Zelin
Adam Lichota
October 17, 2010 at 8:37 am

Thanks.
Need I use 10Gb switch or can I connect my 2-4 workstations to a server directly using multiport addapter you suggested?

Adam
Adam Lichota
October 18, 2010 at 10:16 am

Is it a good idea to equip server with quad-port 1Gb adapters, one per client, set up 4-ports bonds on each adapter and directly connect to clients equiped with 1 quad-port adapter (4-ports bonded also)? In my case 2 clients.
Bob Zelin
October 23, 2010 at 12:51 pm

no – link agg’ing the client does not increase speed.

BobZelin
Eric Hansen
November 6, 2010 at 8:46 pm

hey Adam

are you really getting 220-230 MB/s (not Mb/s) when using bonded ethernet lines between 2 computers? in my experience this does not work and i’d love to know how you’re able to achieve this.

instead of using iperf, can you use AJA System Test, or move a multiple GB ProRes file from one computer to another and look at it using something like Activity Monitor?

thanks

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

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