Solved Is network teaming available in Win 11?

Hello,

We have been trying to get Win 11 to support network teaming with a dual NIC card. I have read of a few people trying this, but I don't know if it has been successful. I have been trying and so has IT, but nothing yet. It was supported under Win 10, but it doesn't seem to work anymore.

We are trying to get this working for our server environment. Apparently, it does work under Windows Server. In our case, we are using Win 11 Pro to both keep costs down, and to run some special software that does not run properly on Windows Server.

I hope someone knows how to do this, or maybe point me to some resources that will help me out. Some help with this will certainly be appreciated.

If I get this figured out, I might try it at home.

Copilot says you can use the "NetSwitchTeam" PowerShell subsystem to create "multi-flow bandwidth aggregation" of NICs. Ask it "Does Windows 11 support NIC teaming" and it will show the commands needed. As is so often the case, this comes with multiple caveats chief among them using server-class NICS (e.g. Intel X710, Broadcomm 57xxx, or Mellanox ConnectX) not typical for normal user setups and PCs/laptops.
Interesting question, though. Please note that this is an unsupported trick.
HTH,
--Ed--

Some folks have worked on porting the old W10 LBFO feature from to W11.
Of course, this is an unsupported feature but the folks working on it appear fairly technical.

GitHub - hifihedgehog/Windows11LBFO: Adds LBFO NIC teaming support to your Windows 11 system with a single script run.

If you want a technical write-up about the internals, read Graham Sunderland's original article:
Re-enabling NIC Teaming (LBFO) in Windows 10 & other desktop SKUs, even after Microsoft removed it

Thank you, gentlemen. I will look into all of the links you attached and see what I can manage this weekend.

I haven't forgotten about this thread. I will post the results as I get them on Monday/Tuesday.

Well, I have some results...

We kind of got it figured out, but the customer has gotten back to us and declared that they will not accept the fix because MS does not support it. They insist that we force it to work somehow and make MS support it.

Like that is gonna happen.

Anyhoo, I want to thank you guys for helping me. The information was very much appreciated. I am going to close the thread now as the entire exercise has been a waste of time.

Customers! Can't live with 'em, but can't kill 'em, either!
--Ed--

PS: reminds me of the old restaurant joke: "This would be a great job if we didn't have any customers."

You don't need anything special for NIC teaming in Windows 11. I posted about this about a year or two ago. I'll look for that post and if I can find it will follow up and post it here.

Bottom line is that I have gotten this to work every time with zero special drivers on every machine I have tried it on.\

Look for another response from me soon.

Found it:


If you like more info on how to test that this works for you, let me know. But the main thing is that everything in your network path MUST support the speed of both adapters being active simultaneously for this to work.

Example, you have two 1Gbps Ethernet adapters both connected at the same time. Now you try to transfer files to another machine on the network that has a single 1Gbps Ethernet adapter. Clearly, you cannot force data to that machine at 2Gbps. So that machine must have either two adapters connected or your network needs to support at least 2Gbps. This includes everything in the path including all switches, etc.

In my testing, I have all 2.5Gbps switches and machines with either dual 1Gbps adapters or a single 2.5Gbps adapter so everything can handle at least 2Gbps speed.

NOTE: If you need proof that this works, I can provide network traces, screenshots, etc. I can GUARANTEE that this works. What I cannot guarantee is that this works with every combo of hardware.

I believe what you're doing is dual-active NIC's, which isn't teaming since both interfaces aren't managed under one logical device.

garlin said:

I believe what you're doing is dual-active NIC's, which isn't teaming since both interfaces aren't managed under one logical device.

Click to expand...

Correct. I'm just saying that the functionality of teaming (at least the increased bandwidth) is available without needing any special teaming software. For your home user most are probably only looking for the increased bandwidth.

In my case, I have a lot of Mini PCs. Some of them have dual 1Gbps interfaces. But my network is all 2.5Gbps. So, I simply connect both 1Gbps interfaces to get the faster data transfers since my network can accommodate this.

For a server environment, this isn't going to pass muster.

NIC teaming includes automatic failover for any disabled links. The user should have to do nothing when a link goes down, or is restored. There's usually some sanity checking on the traffic flow, in the case where you have physical link but your upstream router stopped forwarding packets.

In a home or local office environment, that may be acceptable. But not in production environment where someone reports to a boss.

I agree that this may not be something that you would use in a corporate environment, however, in my testing link breaks were handled seamlessly. I disconnected one link and everything just kept working. I reconnected it and the bandwidth increased, and packet traces showed both adapters utilized again with zero interruption.