Auxiliary NIC in the same network as the principal one

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Anonymous

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I have added a second NIC to my home server (FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p4), and actually I want to achieve that it serves as an auxiliary point of ethernet connection, providing the same network connectivity as the principal NIC does, i.e. pretty much the same as a separate switch with several ethernet ports would do.

From a strict technical point of view, it would not be a problem to add a separate switch at the home server, however, I want to avoid discussions about having another device with all these ugly cables sitting in the corner. Those, who are married, probably know of what I am talking about.

In the moment the auxiliary NIC is working at another network and can serve DHCP requests, anyway it would be more convenient (no network switching at the client side), if it could simply sit in the same network as the principal one.

Is this even possible. If not, then I will wait for a good opportunity for discussing adding a switch.

Best reagrds

Rolf
 
If you need your server to behave like an ethernet switch, create a bridge. You will need cross-over ethernet cable between the secondary NIC and the second device.
Useful info and examples can be found here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/network-bridging.html and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable .
Older FreeBSD versions used a different software stack for etherbet bridging, more info about this can be found here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/filtering-bridges/article.html .
 
phoenix and ecazamir,

Many thanks for your help. I tried the bridging first, and since I achieved exactly what I was looking for with it, I didn't try lagg(8)() anymore.

Best regards

Rolf
 
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