Internet Protocol Multipathing

Internet Protocol Multipathing (IPMP) is a great technology that was introduced a long time ago (originally in Oracle Solaris 8), and since then, it has been improving a lot up to the current Oracle Solaris 11. In a general way, IPMP offers fault-tolerance for the network interfaces scheme, thus eliminating any single point of failure. Moreover, it provides an increase in the network bandwidth for outbound traffic by spreading the load over all active interfaces in the same group. This is our start point; to play with IPMP, an IPMP group interface must be created and all of the data IP addresses should be assigned to this IPMP group interface. Therefore, at the end, all network interfaces that will be used with IPMP must have an IPMP group assigned.

To continue the explanation, the following is a quick example:

• Group interface: hacker_ipmp0

  • Interface 1: net0

    test IP (test_net0): 192.168.1.61

  • Interface 2: net1

    test IP (test_net1): 192.168.1.71

In the previous...