Re: [Xen-API] lacp network bonding not using all NICs

[Ben Pfaff <blp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 10:36:02PM -0700, Carlos Reategui wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:36 PM, Ben Pfaff <blp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> >
> > It looks like you only have a few flows, with one of those flows
> > having dramatically more traffic than the rest.  If that's true,
> > then I don't know how OVS could do better.  It looks like it's
> > doing the best job it can: put the big flow on one NIC and the
> > rest on the other NIC.
>
> I guess I need to learn more about how OVS works and what a "flow" is as
> it seems to work different than the kernel load balancing.

A "flow", in this case, is a related sequence of network packets going
in one direction.  A TCP connection, for example, consists of two flows,
one in each direction.

> So can communication that happens over a single persistent socket
> connection be split across multiple flows?

Generally speaking it is a mistake to split a single flow (transmitted
by a single socket, for example) across multiple links, because this
causes the packets in the flow to be reordered as they cross the
network, which means that the receiver has to put them back in order.
The result is usually a slower connection, not a faster one.

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