lacp on mac mini

[bwestlake]

Hi all,

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to use lacp on a mac mini to have the lan as one nic and the wifi as the other so technically i would get a 1.3gb (1gb from lan + 300mb from wlan)?

[mac_shinobi]

I would be interested to know if you can do that as well. Was gonna say if the mac mini is new enough ie has thunderbolt you can get this

 

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD463ZM/A/thunderbolt-to-gigabit-ethernet-adapter

 

I think there is a usb 2.0 to ethernet adaptor as well but i think usb 2.0 doesn't have brilliant throughput so not sure how fast or slow that will be in comparison

@Arthur or anyone else ?

[bwestlake]

just found this OS X Mavericks: Combine Ethernet ports wondering if it would work with lan + wlan will try tomorrow

[Arthur]

technically I would get a 1.3Gb (1Gb from LAN + 300Mb from WLAN)

You wouldn't get a single 1.3Gb connection though (assuming it works).

 

The network traffic will be balanced between the two interfaces i.e. some users will connect to your Mac mini over Ethernet, while others would go over WiFi. The latter is going to be significantly slower.

[seawolf]

Hi all,

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to use lacp on a mac mini to have the lan as one nic and the wifi as the other so technically i would get a 1.3gb (1gb from lan + 300mb from wlan)?

 

Feasible, but I've never tried it, and I wouldn't recommend it. You'll get better throughput form the single 1Gb NIC.

[mac_shinobi]

@seawolf and @Arthur - if you got one of those dongle(s) / Adaptors ie thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet ( then used LACP ) to combine the onboard gigabit ethernet and the thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet connections would that be any better ?

 

Also when using LACP on a mac does it bond the two connections so if using two gigabit connections it would give you 2gbps or is that used more for redundancy ie if one gigabit connection stops working it would start using the 2nd gigabit connection or what exactly ?

Edited February 20, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[seawolf]

@seawolf and @Arthur - if you got one of those dongle(s) / Adaptors ie thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet ( then used LACP ) to combine the onboard gigabit ethernet and the thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet connections would that be any better ?

 

Yes, but whether it would make sense depends on what you're using the Mac Mini for. If it's as NetBoot/imaging server (DeployStudio, Casper) or a file server it might improve performance as long as the disk(s) were fast enough to use the extra bandwidth (fusion or SSD).