ifenslave

ifenslave configures network interfaces for bonding, allowing multiple physical interfaces to act as a single logical device. This tool attaches and detaches slave network interfaces to a bonding device, which appears as a normal Ethernet device to the kernel but distributes traffic across slaves.

The primary use case is achieving load-balancing similar to channel bonding or trunking techniques used in switches. This setup improves network throughput by parallelizing traffic across multiple interfaces.

ifenslave requires kernel support for bonding devices to function. It integrates with standard networking tools and is particularly useful in environments needing high availability or increased bandwidth without complex configurations.

ifenslave manages slave interfaces for a bonding device supported by the Linux kernel. The bonding device uses a simple round-robin scheduler to distribute outgoing packets across attached slave devices. Incoming traffic is handled normally by the kernel's Ethernet stack, while the bonding layer ensures load distribution for transmission, mimicking switch trunking behavior.