On Jan 3, 2014, at 4:00 PM, Karl Kuehn <[email protected]> wrote: > 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).
Hi Karl, Thanks for your response. It looks like I won't be doing ethernet bonding. While it might work on the Mac Pro end, I doubt that I have a switch that will support it and the computer on the other end (Mac Mini) only has 1 ethernet port. Thanks for answering my asked and un-asked questions! Gregg _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
