Abstract: A method and system are provided for trunking multiple links between a switch and a server. Server drivers recognize and automatically configure additional installed network interface cards (NICs) or multi-port NICs as group members. A monolithic driver, or an overlaying driver shim makes the group of NICs appear to be a single NIC to the server operating system and clients. Multiple NICs having the same MAC address and appearing on different ports are connected directly to a switch which treats the group as a single logical port. Using a deterministic algorithm, the switch looks up a received packet's destination in the address table. A list of possible ports for reaching the server and a flag indicating that the server is to be reached via this trunked group of ports are retrieved. The switch selects a port based upon the packet's source address. On the trunk to the clients, the server driver performs the same deterministic algorithm on the destination addresses.

Abstract: A method and system are provided for trunking multiple links between a switch and a server. Server drivers recognize and automatically configure additional installed network interface cards (NICs) or multi-port NICs as group members. A monolithic driver, or an overlaying driver shim makes the group of NICs appear to be a single NIC to the server operating system and clients. Multiple NICs having the same MAC address and appearing on different ports are connected directly to a switch which treats the group as a single logical port. Using a deterministic algorithm, the switch looks up a received packet's destination in the address table. A list of possible ports for reaching the server and a flag indicating that the server is to be reached via this trunked group of ports are retrieved. The switch selects a port based upon the packet's source address. On the trunk to the clients, the server driver performs the same deterministic algorithm on the destination addresses. The invention supports fault tolerance.