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Let's say I've got 2 physical NICs configured as a bonded interface and another 2 NICs as another bonded interface. Can these 2 bonded interfaces be bonded into a single bonded interface?

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You could (IIRC); but why wouldn't you just add all 4 NICs to a single bond?

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The idea is that each pair of NICs are bonded to form a 2G ethernet link. And then each pair will be bonded active-passive for failover. – Alex Chan Mar 18 '11 at 2:23
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@user, why wouldn't you want to just keep all 4 active and fail over as necessary? Also, if one of the links in the primary pair went down the upper bond wouldn't recognize this as a failure and the overall link would be degraded to 1Gb. Perhaps filling in a bit of your use case would help us understand the features you are looking for. – Chris S♦ Mar 18 '11 at 3:32
@user74915, I suspect you may be thinking bonding is giving more then what it actually does. With two 1GB interfaces bonded together, you do not get 2GB throughput between 2 hosts. You probably need to look really deeply at the kernel bonding settings, and what is supported on your switch. – Zoredache Mar 18 '11 at 5:03
@ Chris S: Thank you for replying. The client thought that by bonding two 1GB links, they can get an aggregated link of 2GB. Then they wanted to have failover protection for this aggregated link and I was asked if it was possible to bond to 2 bonded interfaces. – Alex Chan Mar 20 '11 at 9:25
@Zoredache: I wondering about this too. I was told that if the switch to which the pair of 1GB interfaces was setup properly, a combined throughput of 2GB was possible... so you think it is not the case? - Alex Chan – Alex Chan Mar 20 '11 at 9:30
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