Bonding your network adapters for better performance
Together
© Photo by Andrew Moca on Unsplash
Combining your network adapters can speed up network performance – but a little more testing could lead to better choices.
I recently bought a used HP Z840 workstation to use as a server for a Proxmox [1] virtualization environment. The first virtual machine (VM) I added was an Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS instance with nothing on it but the Cockpit [2] management tool and the WireGuard [3] VPN solution. I planned to use WireGuard to connect to my home network from anywhere, so that I can back up and retrieve files as needed and manage the other devices in my home lab. WireGuard also gives me the ability to use those sketchy WiFi networks that you find at cafes and in malls with less worry about someone snooping on my traffic.
The Z840 has a total of seven network interface cards (NICs) installed: two on the motherboard and five more on two separate add-in cards. My second server with a backup WireGuard instance has 4 gigabit NICs in total. Figure 1 is a screenshot from NetBox that shows how everything is connected to my two switches and the ISP-supplied router for as much redundancy as I can get from a single home network connection.
Figure 1: Topology of my home network.
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