On Tuesday, July 20, 2010, Nirmal Guhan wrote:
> Assuming I have a two NIC system, is it possible to assign a NIC
> exclusively per guest ? Traffic to NIC 1 get routed to guest 1 and NIC
> 2 to guest 2 ? Please let me know.
>
> --Nirmal
>
yes it is possible. i ran 4 nics on 4 different physical networks for several years. there
are a few caveats but most involved outside pings which was not my concern.
you must use iproute2 and have proper route/rule definitions in your host and kernel
settings and each nic 'activated' with a 'parent' ip from each network in the host before
attempting to get the guests to behave within it. it worked quite well for me.
unless you are using 2 different networks that would require 2 different gateways and
netmasks, i strongly suggest staying with one nic. it is a much easier configuration.
also do not try to 'split up' the same network across multiple nics. it won't work unless
that network is divided into unique netblocks each with its own gateway/netmask.
some have tried to ease bandwidth loading by using multiple nics but if your reason for
doing this is to 'ease' the load on the hardware nic using the same network, there is no
reason to. your nic hardware and internal network have far more bandwidth capability than
could possibly be used by any internet connection.
-- ChuckReceived on Wed Jul 21 10:26:37 2010