How to setup LACP

LACP is short for Link Aggregation Control Protocol. With this technology, you can boost your network performance and improve its liability. What's important is that it's only available for dedicated servers in our Hosting solution.

In the article in our public docs, you can find information that before performing any changes inside your operating system, you have to purchase the service itself in ISP (Billmanager). Right after it, you should contact our support team, so we can set it up on our side. And only after that, you can proceed.

In order to set up LACP, you can follow our instruction, but before, some information:

1. The example is valid for Ubuntu 22.04;
2. You should have root access;
3. You should connect to the server only via VNC during the process.

The instruction

1. Install ifenslave package:

   sudo apt-get install ifenslave

2. Add "bonding" to /etc/modules file. You can use echo bonding | sudo tee -a /etc/modules to add it, but feel free to add it via vim/nano.
3. Run modprobe to load bonding immediately:

   sudo modprobe bonding
   

4. Verify that bonding module is loaded. You should see something like "bonding" in the output:

   lsmod | grep bonding
   

5. Let's configure LACP on the server:
   • Stop network services:

     sudo systemctl stop networking
     

     Important note: once you execute this command, the network on your server will be down. Please, make sure that your server is out of production, and you're connected to it via VNC.
   • Edit network interfaces settings (use vim or nano):

     sudo vim/etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml

     Using the following example (replace eth0 and eth1 with your network interface names):

     network:
       version: 2
       renderer: networkd
       ethernets:
         eth0:
           dhcp4: no
         eth1:
           dhcp4: no
       bonds:
         bond0:
           interfaces: [eth0, eth1]
           addresses: [92.223.103.25/24]
           gateway4: 92.223.103.1
           parameters:
             mode: 802.3ad
             lacp-rate: fast
             mii-monitor-interval: 100
     

6. Apply the configuration changes:

   sudo netplan apply
   

   If there is no network connection in the bonding, reboot your server.
7. Check the bond0 status:

   cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0
   

   The output will provide the status of your bonded interface. An example:
   

   Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.7.1 (April 27, 2021)
   
   Bonding Mode: IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation
   Transmit Hash Policy: layer2 (0)
   MII Status: up
   MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
   Up Delay (ms): 0
   Down Delay (ms): 0
   
   802.3ad info
   LACP rate: fast
   Aggregator selection policy (ad_select): stable
   Active Aggregator Info:
   Aggregator ID: 2
   Number of ports: 2
   Actor Key: 9
   Partner Key: 1
   Partner Mac Address: 00:77:54:71:a8:6f
   
   Slave Interface: eth0
   MII Status: up
   Speed: 1000 Mbps
   Duplex: full
   Link Failure Count: 0
   Permanent HW addr: 00:99:97:60:9d:48
   Slave queue ID: 0
   Aggregator ID: 2
   Actor Churn State: none
   Partner Churn State: none
   Actor Churned Count: 0
   Partner Churned Count: 0
   
   Slave Interface: eth1
   MII Status: up
   Speed: 1000 Mbps
   Duplex: full
   Link Failure Count: 0
   Permanent HW addr: 00:00:85:60:9d:49
   Slave queue ID: 0
   Aggregator ID: 2
   Actor Churn State: none
   Partner Churn State: none
   Actor Churned Count: 0
   Partner Churned Count: 0

This output shows that eth0 and eth1 are both up and have been successfully bonded together. They're both part of the same aggregator, indicating that they're working together as expected.

And that's all! If you followed the instruction, but for some reason something isn't working, please drop a message to our support and share the configuration with us.