[e2e] Link Aggregation

[Valentin Ossman]

The reason that I was looking for a Link Aggregation method in the first
place was that there is no way to establish a 2Gbps connection between 2
stations using 2 GbE lines. 
Link aggregation does not allow higher bandwidth per connection, but
only high bandwidth aggregated traffic with the limitation that the
maximum connection bandwidth is 1Gbps.

Still, does anyone know of any effort to define a link aggregation
method that will permit high bandwidth connections? This will be a very
useful method to increase bandwidth.

Valentin 


> Order management is indeed a feature of available network processors
used
> in
> newer routers & similar forwarding devices.  Incoming pkts are, at the
> very
> least, identified by source port (channel on a multiplexed port) and
time
> stamp, and will not be sent from an output queue (or queues) until all
> pkts
> that had arrived before, with the same identifier, have been sent.
This
> was
> common in the design of ASICs for routers and was carried on into
network-
> processor chips, either in hardware dedicated to order management
(IBM,
> Vitesse...), or firmware (Intel...).
> 
> IEEE link aggregation at Layer 2 (DLC), by the way, has been
incorporated
> into
> the design of single-chip switches/bridges, but brings with it some
> interesting shortcomings.  One is that the IEEE standard did not allow
> multiple paths (links) to be used for any one DLC association.  Thus,
if
> one
> has a system capable of filling more than one link's capacity to
another
> system, link aggregation does no good -- pkts between the two systems
are
> passed on one link only, as identified in the bridging table entry for
the
> two
> DLC ends.  Aggregation only helps when there's a mix of DLC
associations.
> 
> Alex
> 
> Alia Atlas wrote:
> >
> > I expect that you may run into problems with one TCP connection
because
> > most routers try to avoid misordering packets of a single microflow.
> Thus,
> > even though there may be several interfaces which are part of an
> ethernet
> > link aggregation, the traffic from a single TCP connection would
> probably
> > be directed towards only one of those interfaces (for a good
> implementation
> > which is trying to avoid misordering).
> >
> > Alia Atlas
> >
> > At 09:56 AM 5/13/2003 -0400, RJ Atkinson wrote:
> >
> > >On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 08:59 America/Montreal, Valentin
Ossman
> wrote:
> > >>Does any one know a link aggregation method for several network
> adapters
> > >>(let's say 4 Gigabit ports) in a way that it will be possible to
> achieve
> > >>one high bandwidth (4Gbps) TCP connection?
> > >
> > >IEEE have a published standard for Ethernet Link Aggregation.  I'd
> > >start by looking that up.  Not clear to me that this relates to the
> > >charter of this mailing list however, so followups probably belong
> > >elsewhere.
> > >
> > >Ran