How to bridge LAN cards in HP-UX

[Amanpreet Singh]

There are 3 LAN cards in my HP-UX RP3440 server. I want to bridge 2 LAN cards. Can anyone tell me how to bridge them?

[Ivan Krastev]

You can use APA (auto-port aggregation software) - http://www.hp.com/products1/serverconnectivity/adapters/apa_overview.html

This is an additional product and must be purchased separately.

regards,
ivan

[Amanpreet Singh]

isnt it possible without using this software?

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi,

APA is a licensed product and i think that there are not other free software available for HP-UX.

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Amanpreet Singh]

ok...thank u both for the inputs, but if anyone knows if it is possible by using some free software or any other method, kindly reply ASAP.

[Court Campbell]

Good luck with that. APA is reasonably priced compared to some of the other HP software. I believe it is around $1100 US.

[HGN]

Hi

We have been using APA for 3 years now which is very good, like Court mentioned it is not that expensive considering the fact that it is licensed from HP and they also support it.

Please dont forget to assign points .

Rgds

HGN

[rick jones]

APA is not for "bridging." APA is for "trunking." Bridging and trunking are very different things.

Trunking/bonding/aggregation is making two or more NICs appear as one NIC to the upper layers of the stack.

Bridging is forwarding frames at layer-2 from one LAN. IE it is what a switch does - and "in the beginning" switches were called multi-port bridges. (N.B. bridging is similar to, but distinct from _routing_ which operates at layer-3)

I don't think there is any _bridging_ software provided by HP for HP-UX, but if you can find some which uses DLPI as the link-layer interface, you could probably port it without too much trouble. And if it doesn't use DLPI for the link-layer interface, you could probably still port it without too too much trouble if the link-layer interface part were sutiably abstracted.

[Amanpreet Singh]

thanks to all of u. fortunately i am using this server in cluster environment, using HP service guard cluster software, which itself can configure 2 LAN cards in Active/Standby mode. this is enough for me.