Multiple Host Network Interfaces

[dbabackup]

Questions:

1.) When the host OS is configured with multiple network interfaces (example: 4 x 1gb nic); can the guest OS utilize the full bandwidth of each individual network interface? Will the network throughput limit to 1gb regardless of the number of host interfaces?

2.) When the host OS is configured with a network interface comprised of a bonded interface (example: 4gb link ==> 4 x 1gb bonded 802.3ad); can the guest OS utilize the full (or near) bandwidth of the host OS's bonded link?

[mpack]

Latencies aside, VirtualBox will have the same potential networking performance of any other application you might run on your host.

[dbabackup]

mpack,
thank you for the response. I am not sure if your response answers my specific questions. I hope you can or will elaborate?

Thanks,

[mpack]

I'm not sure how else to put it. VirtualBox is nothing magical, it's just another application running on your host. As such, it has the same potential for performance as any other network aware application on your host. So, if you have the right software running in the guest, and you choose (say) the VirtIO network interface, then there's no reason to expect unusually good or bad performance from the VM. Network speeds tend to be so far below CPU and data bus speeds that other bottlenecks tend to have very little significance.