How to Plan an IPMP Group

The following procedure includes the required planning tasks and information to be gathered prior to configuring an IPMP group. You do not need to perform these tasks in sequential order.

Your IPMP configuration depends on the network requirements for handling the type of traffic that is hosted on your system. IPMP spreads outbound network packets across the IPMP group's interfaces and thus improves network throughput. However, for a given TCP connection, inbound traffic normally follows only one physical path to minimize the risk of processing out-of-order packets.

Thus, if your network handles a huge volume of outbound traffic, configuring many interfaces into an IPMP group can improve network performance. If, instead, the system hosts heavy inbound traffic, then having a large number of interfaces in the group does not necessarily improve performance by load-spreading traffic. However, having more underlying interfaces helps guarantee network availability during interface failure.

1. Determine the general IPMP configuration that suits your needs.

   Refer to the information in the task summary of this procedure for guidance in determining which IPMP configuration to use.

2. (SPARC only) Verify that each interface in the group has a unique MAC address.

   To configure a unique MAC address for each interface on the system, see How to Ensure That the MAC Address of Each Interface Is Unique in Configuring and Administering Network Components in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .

3. Ensure that the same set of STREAMS modules is configured and pushed on all interfaces in the IPMP group.

   For guidelines and the command syntax to use, see Rules for Using IPMP.

4. Use the same IP addressing format on all of the interfaces in the IPMP group.

   If one interface is configured for IPv4, then you must configure all of the interfaces in the IPMP group for IPv4. Likewise, if you add IPv6 addressing to one interface, then you must configure all of the interfaces in the IPMP group for IPv6 support.

5. Determine the type of failure detection that you want to implement.

   For example, if you want to implement probe-based failure detection, then you must configure test addresses on the underlying interfaces. See Failure Detection in IPMP.

6. Ensure that all of the interfaces in the IPMP group are connected to the same local network.

   For example, you can configure Ethernet switches on the same IP subnet into an IPMP group. You can configure any number of interfaces into an IPMP group.

   ---

   Note -  You can also configure a single-interface IPMP group, for example, if your system has only one physical interface. See Types of IPMP Interface Configurations.

   ---

7. Ensure that the IPMP group does not contain interfaces with different network media types.

   The interfaces that are grouped together must be of the same interface type. For example, you cannot combine Ethernet and Token Ring interfaces in an IPMP group. As another example, you cannot combine a Token bus interface with asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) interfaces in the same IPMP group.

8. For IPMP with ATM interfaces, configure the ATM interfaces in LAN emulation mode.

   IPMP is not supported for interfaces using Classical IP over ATM technology as defined in RFC 1577 and RFC 2225.