trunk from server to switch on 3 lan cards

[Andrzej P.]

Hello.
I've got switch HP ProCurve 2524 and there is possibility of trunking
connections.
I want to set trunk on 3 connections from one server. I know how to do this
on my switch. I don't know how I must configure my Netware to share 3 lan
cards as one connection. I think it's load balance, but I don't remember
anything about this. Can you help about this problem?

Andrew P. from Poland

[Marcel Cox]

Note that using a single faster card is always much better than making
a trunk of a number of slower cards. For instance a single gigabit card
is better than multiple 100Mbit cards.
Anyway, the only way of having true load sharing on incoming and
outgoing traffic is to use the load sharing solutions provided by NIC
vendors. For this, you need multiple nics from the same vendor and the
cendor must supply a load sharing driver for his nics.
One such solution for instance is the Intel IANS.LAN driver which works
with Intel's 100Mbit and Gigabit cards.

--
Marcel Cox (using XanaNews 1.16.1.5)

[Andrzej P.]

> Note that using a single faster card is always much better than making
> a trunk of a number of slower cards. For instance a single gigabit card
> is better than multiple 100Mbit cards.

OK but what if switch have only two places for fast connection and both are
for transmission to another places. In this location I've got only one
server and I want to use it for connection to this server and 12 other
computers. There is no risson to buy next switch for fast connection with
this server.

> One such solution for instance is the Intel IANS.LAN driver which works
> with Intel's 100Mbit and Gigabit cards.

I'll try to do this but I've got only one 3COM 980 card in this server, so
I'll have to take another one from second server and then I'll tell you
about this case.

Bye
Andrew P.

[Marcel Cox]

Andrzej P. wrote:

> I'll try to do this but I've got only one 3COM 980 card in this
> server, so I'll have to take another one from second server and then
> I'll tell you about this case.

I have no experience with 3c980 cards myself, but I downloaded their
NetWare drivers and they seem to offer a load balancing solution. Here
is the readme from their driver disk:

3Com (R) Corporation
Etherlink Server 10/100 PCI
3C98X NIC Family
NetWare Server Driver Installation Notes

Netware 4.2
===========

Service Pack 6 or higher is required to support driver

Netware 5.0
===========

Service Pack 2 or higher is required if hardware checksumming is
enabled.

Known Issues
============

Server Abend during driver unload
---------------------------------

1. If you are running 3C98x driver on Netware 4.x and 5.0, you should
load ODINEB.NLM before loading 3C98x driver otherwise server may
abend. This problem is fixed in Netware 5.1 release.

2. If you are using the DynamicAccess Advanced Features i.e.SE.NLM,
you should not use NWIP or the server will abend.

Example of Autoexec.NCF
========================

load se
load lbrsl

;Define Group 1 primary NIC slot-frame instances
load 3c980 slot=10001 frame=ethernet_802.2 name=p1_802.2
load 3c980 slot=10001 frame=ethernet_ii name=p1_ii

;Define Group 1 secondary NIC slot-frame instances
load 3c980 slot=10002 frame=ethernet_802.2 name=p2_802.2
load 3c980 slot=10002 frame=ethernet_ii name=p2_ii
load 3c980 slot=10003 frame=ethernet_802.2 name=p3_802.2
load 3c980 slot=10003 frame=ethernet_ii name=p3_ii

;Define Group 2 primary NIC slot-frame instances
load 3c980 slot=10004 frame=ethernet_802.2 name=p4_802.2
load 3c980 slot=10004 frame=ethernet_ii name=p4_ii

;Define Group 2 secondary NIC slot-frame instances
load 3c980 slot=10005 frame=ethernet_802.2 name=p5_802.2
load 3c980 slot=10005 frame=ethernet_ii name=p5_ii

;Define Group 3 primary NIC slot-frame instances
load 3c980 slot=10006 frame=ethernet_802.2 name=p6_802.2
load 3c980 slot=10006 frame=ethernet_ii name=p6_ii

;Define Group 3 secondary NIC slot-frame instances
load 3c980 slot=10007 frame=ethernet_802.2 name=p7_802.2
load 3c980 slot=10007 frame=ethernet_ii name=p7_ii

;Bind protocols to primary NICs
bind ipx to p1_802.2 net=FF02
bind ip to p1_ii address=192.1.1.1 mask=ff.ff.ff.00
bind ipx to p4_802.2 net=FF04
bind ip to p4_ii address=192.1.2.1 mask=ff.ff.ff.00
bind ipx to p6_802.2 net=FF06
bind ip to p6_ii address=192.1.3.1 mask=ff.ff.ff.00

;Create Group 1 with NIC 10001 primary
;and NICs 10002 and 10003 secondary
lbrsl group lb 10001 10002 10003

;Create Group 2 with NIC 10004 primary
;and NIC 10005 secondary
lbrsl group lb 10004 10005

;Create Group 3 with NIC 10006 primary
;and NIC 10007 secondary; Receive IP load balancing is enabled
lbrsl group lb addr 192.1.3.253 10006 10007

;To create resilient server link groups without load balancing
; use the rsl option:
;lbrsl group rsl 10001 10002 10003
;lbrsl group rsl 10004 10005

(%VER \NWSERVER\README.TXT v2.1a)