is a tool to attach and detach slave network devices to a bonding device. A bonding device will act like a normal Ethernet network device to the kernel, but will send out the packets via the slave devices using a simple round-robin scheduler. This allows for simple load-balancing, identical to "channel bonding" or "trunking" techniques used in switches.

The kernel must have support for bonding devices for to be useful.

-a, -all-interfaces

Show all interfaces.

-c, -change-active

Changes active slave.

-d, -detach

Instead of adding removes slave interfaces from the bonding device.

-X, -dont-inherit

When enslaving, don't let the slave inherit addresses and other settings from the master interface. Also, when detaching, don't put the slave interface down.

-f, -force

Force actions to be taken if one of the specified interfaces appears not to belong to an Ethernet device.

-?, -help

Display usage information and exit.

-h, -howto

Display a short howto.

-r, -receive-slave

Configure an interface according to the master interface, but don't enslave it.

-v, -verbose

Print warning and debug messages.

-V, -version

Show version information and exit.

The following example shows how to setup a bonding device and enslave two real Ethernet devices to it: # modprobe bonding # ifconfig bond0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.0.0 # ifenslave bond0 eth0 eth1

Although the intention of the original program was to make the slave interfaces completely subordinate to the master interface, this version will allow the bonding device to be set up without interfering with the working of the slave devices by specifying the -X or --dont-inherit option. This way it is possible to configure the master and slave interfaces with different MAC and IP addresses. If a packet is routed to a slave interface, the ordinary action of sending it out via that interface will be taken. The source address (both MAC and IP) will be inherited from that interface. If a packet is routed to the master interface, the packet is sent out via one of the corresponding slave interfaces, but the source address (MAC and IP) will be inherited from the master interface.

was originally written by Donald Becker Aq becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov . This version was taken from the Linux kernel source.

This manual page was written by Guus Sliepen Aq guus@sliepen.warande.net for the Debian GNU/Linux system.