With two NICs available on my motherboard (one Intel I217V and one Atheros AR8161B), whereas the product specifications warns that “teaming is not supported”, I am aware that any capable network stack would be able to handle teaming via software (disregarding drivers and assuming certain hardware acceleration features like TCP offloading is disabled).

Of course, proper LACP/802.13ad (bonding mode #4) set up requires upstream networking equipment support (i.e. your network switch also requires such support). Fortunately, I happen to have a TP-Link TL-SG3424P managed switch which does support this. Obviously, this is overkill, but I highly recommend the TP-Link TL-SG2008 if 8 ports are sufficient. As I had the chance to run multiple Cat6 cable runs from the closet/store to the various rooms in my apartment when it was renovated, I could, and do, use a SG2008s as a trunk port in my study which is link-aggregated to the SG3424P.

Network Manager

Some instructions on the big, bad Internet mentioned using the Network Manager from the desktop. All that did was to mess up the settings.

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkManager
• https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/sec-Establishing_a_Bond_Connection.html

Fortunately, I had backups of the /etc/network/interfaces file which I could revert the damage the Network Manager did. So, I finally did the sane thing and just disabled the Network Manager:

• http://xmodulo.com/disable-network-manager-linux.html

If You Want Something Done Right, You Have To Do It Yourself…

So, we come back to the good ol’ shell…

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