N8800SAS with firmware 3.00.06
802.3ad bonding setup on N8800SAS
802.3ad LACP LAG configured on Netgear GS724AT

The performance is actually worse when 802.3ad bonding is setup on the N8800SAS. We can sustain about 140-145MB/sec without bonding, when bonding is enabled, the unit can only sustain 125MB/sec.

Using SSHD and SYSUSER modules I'm able to login to the N8800SAS to see what its doing. Its using an older 'Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver v3.1.3 from June 2007'. Currently version of this driver is 3.3.0 (June 2008)

When I push the read/write advanced disk test in Passmark PerformanceTest it shows I'm getting 125MB/sec when bonding is enabled.

Using ifconfig I can see that the N8800SAS is using one interface to send packets while the other interface receives packets! Its not aggregating the interfaces to create a 2gbps connection like it should.

root@127.0.0.1:~# ifconfig
bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:FD:12:EE:3E
inet addr:192.168.3.100 Bcast:192.168.3.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2353199 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:5294030 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2317879315 (2.1 GiB) TX bytes:2554930217 (2.3 GiB)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:FD:12:EE:3E
UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:106040 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:5293339 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:9535130 (9.0 MiB) TX bytes:2554835193 (2.3 GiB)
Base address:0xaf00 Memory:fd4c0000-fd4e0000

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:FD:12:EE:3E
UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2247159 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:691 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2308344185 (2.1 GiB) TX bytes:95024 (92.7 KiB)
Base address:0x9f00 Memory:fdec0000-fdee0000




At this time I can assume its because of one or both of the following:
1) They are using an older 3.1.3 bonding driver instead of the latest 3.3.0
2) They are using an older 7.6.9.1 Intel Driver instead of the latest 8.0.16

Others should test on their switch using PerformanceTest by PassMark (advanced disk / add fileserver test') over iSCSI to confirm they are only getting 1gbps bandwidth instead of 2gbps bandwidth like they should when both the N7700SAS/N8800SAS and the server or workstation are setup for LACP 802.3ad link aggregation (Intel calls it Teaming). If you do please open a ticket with Thecus so we can get them to fix this.