Ethernet Channel Bonding (ECB)

Claude Pignol cpignol at seismiccity.com
Tue Apr 23 15:32:00 PDT 2002


Martin,

Have you generalized channel bonding to all the nodes of your cluster?

Which switch do you use?

Thanks
Claude

Martin Siegert wrote:

>On Mon, Apr 22, 2002 at 06:01:22PM -0600, Timothy W. Moore wrote:
>
>>I am new to the Beowulf cluster computing and am awaiting UPS to deliver 
>>my systems.  I have been researching ECB and it seems to have mixed 
>>reviews regarding performance enhancement.  Would/Could someone shed 
>>some light on this topic to the following effect:
>>
>>[1] Is it truly necessary?
>>
>
>That depends on the programs you are planning to run your cluster. With
>respect to performance: I am getting 269Mbit/s bandwith with 3-way
>channel bonded fast ethernet (using 3Com NICs). This is almost exactly
>three times as much as I get from a single NIC. The latency is not quite
>as good as with a single NIC: 55us vs. 43us (all numbers measured with
>netpipe). Thus if your program doesn't need the bandwith or if your
>program is extremely sensitive to latencies then you don't need channel
>bonding.
>
>>[2] If using RedHat 7.2, should I re-compile the kernel?
>>
>
>Not necessarily. The bonding.o module is part of all RedHat kernels.
>However, I strongly recommend upgrading the kernel to 2.4.18 - I had
>problems with all earlier 2.4.x versions.
>
>Regards,
>Martin
>
>========================================================================
>Martin Siegert
>Academic Computing Services                        phone: (604) 291-4691
>Simon Fraser University                            fax:   (604) 291-4242
>Burnaby, British Columbia                          email: siegert at sfu.ca
>Canada  V5A 1S6
>========================================================================
>_______________________________________________
>Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
>To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Claude Pignol SeismicCity, Inc. <http://www.seismiccity.com>
2900 Wilcrest Dr.    Suite 470  Houston TX 77042
Phone:832 251 1471 Mob:281 703 2933  Fax:832 251 0586






More information about the Beowulf mailing list