Intel 4-port ethernet adaptor link aggregation issue

[Pieper, Jeffrey E]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-net at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-net at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Jack Vogel
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 3:49 PM
To: Joe Moog
Cc: freebsd-net; Ryan Stone
Subject: Re: Intel 4-port ethernet adaptor link aggregation issue

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Joe Moog <joemoog at ebureau.com> wrote:

> On Aug 1, 2013, at 4:27 PM, Joe Moog <joemoog at ebureau.com> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 1, 2013, at 3:55 PM, Ryan Stone <rysto32 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Have you tried using only two ports, but both from the NIC?  My
> suspicion would be that the problem is in the lagg's handling of more than
> 2 ports rather than the driver, especially given that it is the igb driver
> in all cases.
> >
> > Ryan:
> >
> > We have done this successfully with two ports on the NIC, on another
> hardware-identical host. That said, it is entirely possible that this is a
> shortcoming of lagg.
> >
> > Can you think of any sort of workaround? Our desired implementation
> really requires the inclusion of all 4 ports in the lagg. Failing this
> we're looking at the likelihood of 10G ethernet, but with that comes
> significant overhead, both cost and administration (before anybody tries to
> force the cost debate, remember that there are 10G router modules and
> 10G-capable distribution switches involved, never mind the cabling and SFPs
> -- it's not just a $600 10G card for the host). I'd like to defer that
> requirement as long as possible. 4 aggregated gig ports would serve us
> perfectly well for the near-term.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Joe
>
> UPDATE: After additional testing, I'm beginning to suspect the igb driver.
> With our setup, ifconfig identifies all the ethernet ports as igb(0-5). I
> configured igb0 with a single static IP address (say, 192.168.1.10), and
> was able to connect to the host administratively. While connected, I
> enabled another port as a second standalone port, again with a unique
> address (say, 192.168.1.20), and was able to access the host via that
> interface as well. The problem arises when we attempt to similarly add a
> third interface to the mix -- and it doesn't seem to matter what
> interface(s) we use, or in what order we activate them. Always on the third
> interface, that third interface fails to respond despite showing "active"
> both in ifconfig and on the switch.
>
> If there is anything else I could try that would be useful to help
> identify where the issue may reside, please let me know.
>
>
>Well, you're using a PRERELEASE of 9.1,  leads me to wonder how old the igb
>driver is also. First step would be to try all this
>on more recent bits... I'd go for HEAD or at least 9.2 BETA as a start. We
>don't use or test lagg within Intel, but we've tested the
>quad port adapter and not seen an issue with a third port not working.
>
>Good luck,
>
>Jack

I can ping to 4 different subnets using all 4 ports simultaneously with an I350-T4 using 9.1-RELEASE and igb-2.3.9 (in-kernel driver) connected to a Cisco 4948, so the issue is definitely not with the igb driver.

Jeff
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