Episode 68 — Bonding: when to bundle links and what can go wrong
Bonding is tested in CloudNetX because it affects both performance and resilience at the server and infrastructure edge, and it can cause outages when assumptions between endpoints are mismatched. This episode defines bonding as combining multiple network interfaces into a single logical interface, enabling redundancy and potentially increased aggregate throughput depending on the mode and traffic patterns. The first paragraph focuses on why bonding is used: to maintain connectivity when one physical link fails and to increase total capacity across multiple simultaneous flows. It also clarifies that bonding modes matter, because active-backup provides straightforward redundancy, while load-balancing modes require coordination with switching behavior and may still keep a single flow on a single path. The episode frames bonding as an operational choice that must align with switch configuration, monitoring expectations, and application sensitivity.
