[Beowulf] Experience of using multiple network devices on a node in cluster

[Stuart Midgley]

My own experience has not been positive.  I fiddled with route  
tables, statically routing IP's out different interfaces etc... and  
then ran some bandwidth tests.

The net result was that I got around 12% extra out of the 2nd NIC and  
no noticeable performance gain on any applications.  Most desktop/low  
end systems struggle to push both nics hard... so it just wasn't  
worth it.

Stu.


On 14/05/2005, at 4:10, Tajendra Singh wrote:

> Greetings!!
>
> Many of the vendors are providing two GigE ports by default on  
> systems which
> are being used as nodes in beowulf types of clusters.
>
> Is there anybody who tried connecting both the ports to the switch?  
> I know
> LA-MPI ( http://public.lanl.gov/lampi/) talks about utilizing multiple
> network devices in real time, but did not get chance to experiment  
> with it.
> I would like to hear your opinion whether it makes sense, looking  
> at the
> lower costs per port for GigE switches?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> TV Singh
> HPC Applications, ATS/UCLA
>


--
Dr Stuart Midgley
sdm900 at gmail.com