Ethernet NIC dual homing

Laurent Deniel
2001-10-28T17:23:27Z

Hi,

Does someone know if there is some work in the area of NIC dual homing ?
By NIC dual homing, I mean two network devices (e.g. Ethernet) that are
connected to the same IP subnet but only one is active (at IP level) at a
time. When a faulty condition is detected (e.g. link down or lack of I/O),
the kernel switches to the second NIC. Such a similar feature exists in
Tru64 UNIX (NetRAIN), HP-UX (APA) and Solaris (Sun Cluster pnmd).
What is the best way to handle that in Linux ? I thought about an IP virtual
device that could be mapped on two eternet NIC and some ioctl to switch from
one NIC to another or a generic virtual ethernet driver that could handle two
real ethernet drivers ?

Laurent

PS: please CC to me since I do not read lkml at a regular basis. TIA.