Installation guide

4.4.5 Support for NetRAIN Network Interface

Tru64 UNIX now provides support for detecting the physical loss of network

connectivity, and subsequent automatic switchover to a working network

interface. This feature is called Redundant Array of Independent Network

adapters (NetRAIN).

NetRAIN uses two or more network interfaces to provide redundancy.

Although only one interface at a time is actually used for communication, all

interfaces are monitored to ensure that trafﬁcisﬂowing on each. If the

interface currently being used should suffer a loss of connectivity, NetRAIN

will switch network trafﬁc to the next working interface. All the context of

the previous interface is maintained: hardware address, multicast addresses,

and so on.

NetRAIN is conﬁgured through extensions to the ifconfig command. It

also features a programming interface via ioctl() for manual program

control.

NetRAIN supports the following network adapters:

• DE435 (PCI/Ethernet)

• DE500-XA (PCI/Fast Ethernet)

• DE500-AA (PCI/Fast

• DE504-AA (Four-port/Fast Ethernet)

• DE500-BA (PCI/Fast Ethernet)

• DEFEA (EISA/FDDI)

• DEFPA (PCI/FDDI)

• DE422 (EISA/Lance Ethernet)

• DE425 (EISA/Ethernet)

• DEMFA (XMI/FDDI)

• DEMNA (XMI/Ethernet)

• ATM Emulated LAN (ELAN) interface (any supported ATM adapter)

TruCluster Software users should consult the Software Product Descriptions

(SPDs) for TruCluster Software for a list of network interfaces supported by

that product.

For more details about NetRAIN, see the Network Administration guide and

the nr(7) and ifconfig(8) reference pages.

Base System Software Notes 4–29