Multiple Network Interfaces

[Paul Civati]

Brent L Johnson <brent at bjohnson.net> wrote:

> When installing FreeBSD 3.3-STABLE on a machine with 2 network cards...
> will the installation automatically detect the two cards and install any

It should do, the install kernel will generally have as many devices as
possible in it, to enable it to install on a wide range of hardware.

Though, it is always recommended to build your own custom kernel once
you have installed.  You'll need the /usr/src/sys sources to be able
to do this.

> drivers needed for them?  What about the route table and such.. will it
> automatically set up the routing so packets are routed to both of them?

To act as a router you need to have IP forwarding turned on (ie. packets
are forwarded between interfaces, which is basically all a router does)
and routes in the routing table.  I don't think the installer will do
that kind of set up for you.

IP forwarding can (I think) either be enabled through the GATEWAY option
in the kernel or turned on via one of the kernel sysctl variables.

> Is there any documentation on setting this up if this isn't done
> automatically?

There might be some in the FAQ or Handbook.

For the hardware, PCI cards should be pretty easy, just build a kernel
with entries for the devices you have.

(The Intel EtherExpress 10/100 are generally recognised as being the
best at the moment, although I did pick up a couple of Realtek based
cards recently for under 12 quid each that seemed to offer very good
performance, under basic testing).

ISA cards are more fiddly as you have to manually configure the cards
with the right IRQ etc and then build a matching kernel config, then
pray you don't have conflicts, etc. ;)  I can give more details on this.

-Paul-