Solved NIC Teaming Term Confusion

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Hey,

In Windows Server 101 "Networking Fundamentals" video and PDF I'm getting a little confused about the terms. I've Googled it but didn't find what I needed, so could someone check my understanding?

• Switch Dependent and Switch Independent are terms that apply only to both Inbound and Outbound traffic.

• Switch Independent teaming utilizes Active/Active and Active/Standby NIC settings to determine performance vs. redundancy.

• Active/Active and Active/Standby are NIC Team settings that applies to BOTH inbound and outbound traffic and only applicable to Switch Independent teaming.

• Switch Dependent teaming is funneling all traffic through a single switch like one big "pipe" for performance. It automatically treats the NICs as one big NIC, thus has no use for the Active/Active and Active/Standby settings.

• Load Balancing aka Distribution Algorithms apply only to Outbound traffic.

Thanks

@t-h said in NIC Teaming Term Confusion:

Hey,

In Windows Server 101 "Networking Fundamentals" video and PDF I'm getting a little confused about the terms. I've Googled it but didn't find what I needed, so could someone check my understanding?

• Switch Dependent and Switch Independent are terms that apply only to both Inbound and Outbound traffic.

I'm not sure that they apply ONLY to inbound and outbound traffic. They are mode whereby

• if you use Switch Independent, the teaming is handled by Windows Server without any need to configure the switch since the ports can be on multiple switches.
• If you're using Switch Dependent, it requires configuration on the SWITCH to become NIC teaming aware even though those teamed ports are on the same physical switch or same modularized switch.

• Switch Independent teaming utilizes Active/Active and Active/Standby NIC settings to determine performance vs. redundancy.

This Active/Standby is when the administrator doesn't want to use the bandwidth aggregation capabilities of NIC Teaming. The default I believe, from memory, is Active/Active

• Active/Active and Active/Standby are NIC Team settings that applies to BOTH inbound and outbound traffic and only applicable to Switch Independent teaming.

I'm sure that it applies to bi-directional traffic since in both instances the NIC Teaming is "seen" and "behaves" like a single connection.

• Switch Dependent teaming is funneling all traffic through a single switch like one big "pipe" for performance. It automatically treats the NICs as one big NIC, thus has no use for the Active/Active and Active/Standby settings.

Regardless of which mode you choose, Windows server will see it as a single NIC with aggregated bandwidth. On single switch for dependent mode, there is no redundant device for failover. So instead you'll have to something like LACP teaming or static teaming for individual port failures.

• Load Balancing aka Distribution Algorithms apply only to Outbound traffic.

The best practice in load balancing is keep the traffic from a tcp-stream on a single network adapter. This can really only apply to outbound since we cannot control how the data will arrive at the switch from the other side, we can though from source send a TCP stream to a single NIC.

Thanks

Thank you for posting and apologies for any of my confusing instruction!

@ronnie-wong

Thanks for the clarification, this is very helpful. The issue here isn't confusing instructions, it's that I often get stuck in gratuitous detail and have a hard time moving forward even if the answers aren't necessary.