Link bonding (802.3ad / LACP)
Aggregate two or more physical ports into one logical link. Standards-based 802.3ad interoperates with any conformant switch, plus static modes for switches without LACP.
Modes
8023ad is LACP and the default — it needs LACP on the switch and gives active-active load sharing. active-backup keeps one member active with the rest standby and needs no switch configuration. balance-xor is a static L3+L4 hash load share with no LACP.
Building a bond
A trunk is built one port at a time. Members are interface names; the daemon resolves each to its stable PCI address. Trunk edits follow the normal candidate model, but the apply timing differs: a bond must exist before its ports are queued, so it is created on the next restart.
interface add trunk bond0 mode 8023ad
interface ether1 add trunk bond0
interface ether2 add trunk bond0
commit ; save # then RESTART to build the bond
show interface bonding
After the bond is built
Once built, the bond appears as a single port everywhere — show interfaces, RSS, worker mapping, and the access or WAN role. Optional tuning in the bond config file covers LACP rate (slow at 30 s is the interop default) and the TX hash policy.