on 2014-01-03 10:14 Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [V] wrote
> Can I use both ethernet ports on my Mac Pro to make local network backups
> faster, or at least to keep local network backups from slowing down internet
> use?
[...]
> 1. connnect LaCie disk array to Mac Mini via thunderbolt
>
> 2. connect Mac Mini to gigabit router via ethernet
>
> 3. connect Mac Pro to gigabit router via ethernet
As others have already hinted at, the dual ports on Mac Pros (all,
including the new ones) support ethernet bonding (802.3ad) to connect multiple
ethernet connections into one virtual connection. But this sort of connection
requires support and settings on both sides of the connection, so in your case
your switch would also have to support (and be setup) for this. Commercial
switches with at least some management often support this, but home switches do
not.
802.3ad is a complicated beast, but the default settings (done though
System Preferences’s network panel) go with the most common variant: each
TCP/IP connection is routed onto one of the connections and stays there. So you
can’t speed up a single stream, but there is often some speedup because
different streams don’t compete with each other as much (there is some
randomness on that). The other advantage of this is that if one of the cables
gets disconnected all of the traffic that was going through that connection
gets automatically re-routed to the other.
In your setup I don’t think that you can really use this, unless you
want to have the second ethernet connection going straight to your Mac mini,
and that mini to then have no internet connection (or only over WiFi). Probably
not a good match to what you are likely doing.
But to answer an un-asked question: the main reason behind the dual
ports on MacPros is not to do port aggregation, but rather to allow connections
on two separate networks. Mostly this is so that you can have both an ethernet
connection, as well as a Storage Area Network (SAN) connection. For example on
a computer hooked up to a Xsan setup you use the second ethernet connection to
connect to the Xsan Metadata controllers (on their own private network), while
your main data flows over your FiberChannel connection(s).
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