this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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me_irl
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Bonded ethernet ports are for redundancy and concurrency, which is not quite additional bandwidth. (Just calling that out to help squash any misconceptions of how bonding works. It is technically more bandwidth, but you won't see total throughput of the two links unless you are transferring multiple files.)
Yea, it definitely does not help a single stream hit higher bandwidth, that's for sure.
(ok well it definitely could, but it'd have to be something at a higher network layer that'd know how to set up and juggle multiple data sources, like BitTorrent, or some other similarly 'smart' client)
Of course either way, it requires the external connections to actually be separate. If they ultimately try to cram down the same ISP service, bonding becomes a waste.
I use load balanced links to my NAS since it is primarily used for photos and other small files. I do get fairly close to full utilization if Windows needs to rebuild all the thumbnails or if my servers happen to read the NAS SMB share at the same time.
Still, it is kinda pointless except in the rare cases it's not. 99% of the time it's only one link that gets used. My NAS and my switch support it so there isn't really a reason not to bond them.