A bridge with multi speed NICS?

TrueNAS General
1

Hi everyone.

So for context, I wish to create a bridge in Truenas.
Connected NICS will be a 2.5Gb - already have.
Also a 25Gb. I may buy 2 for a direct connection between my NAS & main PC.

The main purpose is -
NOT WASTING MONEY ON STRATOSPHERICALLY PRICED SWITCHES.

So firstly is it technically possible.?
Any traffic through the 2.5Gb nic is obviosusly capped at that speed.
Will it slow down access to trunas through the 25Gb nic?

The 2.5Gb nic is connected to a proxmox machine, with my opnsense router as a VM.

Its 1Gb is to a 8 port 1Gb managed switch configued for wan & other lans.

So PC will be connected to the NAS with the 25Gb direct connect & to the 1Gb switch.
It is a dual boot windows linux.

Windows is gaming only. The connection to the switch will be disabled.

All internet & local traffic will be through the 25Gb NIC.
On truenas scale, I intend to install an ubuntu server virtual machine with a lancache instance. I want 25Gb network access to it.
Also games are on an ISCSI instance on the NAS.

As for linux on the PC, I will just have the 1Gb for internet access & the 25Gb for NAS access - with appropriate network setup.

So again a bridge with 2 different speed NICs attached?
Is it technically possible?

Will the slower nic cause slower access to truenas when accessing through the faster one?

Oh and I do not care if this is recommended or not, I am setting something like this up anyway.

If bridging is an issue, then some sort of NAT setup with port forwarding is doable, but much messier.

Useful & informed feedback is appreciated.

2

Why do you even need a bridge? You can/should just assign IPs from different subnets to both NICs on your TrueNAS. And on your PC.

With the aforementioned approach, each NIC would have its own IP (in different subnets). So, the exact interface you are connecting through to your NAS would depend on this address.

From your description I didn’t really understand whether you plan to have 2 NICs on your PC. But the suggested approach requires 2 NICs. 1 for LAN traffic and 1 for “SAN”.

3

I need a bridge, so when using my PC for games, is on the same LAN as the lancache instance.

I know how to create a bridge on truenas scale.
Will it work with mismatched speed nics attached to it?

I do not yet have the 25Gb nics & cable, so need to know before I buy.

So traffic through the NAS from the windows PC will be capped at 2.5Gb.
Traffic to/from the NAS capped at 25Gb.
That will be game downloads & ISCSI access, as well as traffic through the NAS.
The nic connected to the switch will be disabled.
This: https://lancache.net/ - only seems to function when using a single network.

As for using linux on the same attached PC, Use the 1Gb switch for internet access & direct connect to the NAS through 25Gb (no gateway).
Oh and different lans.

A stated, are not wasting any money on overpriced switches.

So can truenas scale so this?

4

I’m not familiar with lancache. But it seems to work with some kind of DNS forgery. I wonder how they cache HTTPS traffic…

Anyway, if it’s only a dns server, then it can be accessed from different IPs (assuming 2 NICs on truenas). No need for bridge (probably). I can’t be sure.

IMO, if you plan to use 25G only for caching games, it is simply not worth it. I doubt that you are installing and deleting (same) games on a daily basis. OTOH, you do you…

5

Firstly I wish to refer you to the last line of my initial post!

It is working very very well.

There are 2 ISCSI instances of games on the NAS.
Deduplication helps a lot with that.
I will have a good laugh at any feed back/having a go at that.

The first is connected to a windows VM, which updates games in the background.
The lancache is populated.

Boot to windows to game, well updates are extremely fast.
The primocache software & local nvme cache storage helps a lot.

Do you have any useful information , or just here to troll?

6

I wish you all the best.

7

Short answers:

2 Likes