Configuring Network Bonding for Redundancy

By Admin · Feb 25, 2026 · Updated Apr 23, 2026 · 186 views · 1 min read

What Is Network Bonding?

Network bonding (or teaming) combines multiple network interfaces into a single logical interface. This provides redundancy (failover) and optionally increased throughput (aggregation).

Bonding Modes

Mode	Name	Use Case
0	balance-rr	Round-robin for load balancing
1	active-backup	Failover (most common)
2	balance-xor	XOR-based load balancing
4	802.3ad (LACP)	Dynamic link aggregation
5	balance-tlb	Adaptive transmit load balancing
6	balance-alb	Adaptive load balancing (no switch support needed)

Configure Active-Backup on Ubuntu

Edit /etc/netplan/01-bond.yaml:

network:
  version: 2
  bonds:
    bond0:
      interfaces: [eth0, eth1]
      addresses: [198.48.63.241/28]
      routes:
        - to: default
          via: 198.48.63.1
      parameters:
        mode: active-backup
        primary: eth0
        mii-monitor-interval: 100

sudo netplan apply

Verify Bond Status

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0
# Shows active interface, link status, and failover count

Testing Failover

# Simulate interface failure
sudo ip link set eth0 down

# Check that bond0 switches to eth1
cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

# Bring back
sudo ip link set eth0 up