From: Tim Pushor (timpcrossthread.com)
Date: Tue Aug 01 2006 - 15:00:19 CDT

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Hi Jason,

Jason Dixon wrote:
> On Aug 1, 2006, at 3:13 PM, Tim Pushor wrote:
>
>> Jason Dixon wrote:
>>> On Aug 1, 2006, at 2:48 PM, Tim Pushor wrote:
>>>
>>>> Can anyone recommend another 4 port 10/100 ethernet card that will
>>>> work well with OpenBSD 3.9?
>>>
>>> I don't have any recommendations on 4 port cards. If you have a
>>> switch that will support it, you should consider using VLANs with a
>>> gigabit card instead.
>> Hmm now that is VERY interesting. Would it be possible to run a trunk
>> on a vlan, then a carp on the trunk?
>>
>> Also, why the gigabit? Strictly performance?
>
> I think you're getting your technologies confused. If you're
> referring to an OpenBSD trunk (versus a Cisco trunk), that is an
> aggregation of physical ports on a switch. Theoretically, you would
> do this, then layer vlan interfaces on top of the trunk. However, you
> mentioned that you wanted 4 10/100 interfaces. Using a single gigabit
> port would enable you to exceed the capacity of 4 10/100 interfaces
> with a single port. You would have a single physical interface (say,
> em0) connected to a switch port enabled for VLANs (e.g., Cisco
> trunk). Then you can split up the networks by VLAN, rather than by
> physical connection. Here's a sample setup.
>
Thanks a lot for replying. I am new to ethernet redudancy (and carp to
boot) so I probably don't know what I'm talking about. We have a rack of
servers that are now for the most part fully redundant. You can pull the
plug on any box and nothing stops - almost. The ethernet switch is the
last holdout.

So now I am looking at adding ethernet redundancy to an already
redundant firewall setup. So now instead of having 1 interface in, 1
interface out, and 1 interface pfsync, classically I'd need another 2
ports per server for redundancy. So I was thinking that instead of all
this, I could run it all on vlans, if openbsd will do it.

Am I wrong in thinking that I'd use a trunk(4) for a redundant ethernet
connection? If not, then I was thinking that since the servers already
have 2 gigabit ports on them (bge, from dell 850's) that I could run two
vlan's each (one internal, one external), trunk(4) the vlans, then
carp(4) the trunks.. Does that make sense? I'd still use the add-in card
for pfsync.

(I tried, but I suck at complex ascii art network diagrams)

> But to answer your question... no, it is not strictly a performance
> (higher throughput, fewer interrupts, etc) boost. Having less
> hardware means less opportunity for something to fail (ports, cables,
> etc).
Gotcha. Thanks..

Tim

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