Specifies the bonding mode (default: 0).

Valid Values:

>0: Balance Round Robin. Packets are transmitted alternately on each device in the bond, providing load balancing and fault tolerance.

>1: Active-Backup. One bonded device is active and the other serves as a backup. The backup only becomes active if the active device loses connectivity.

>2: Balance XOR. Transmits based on an XOR formula, where the source MAC address is XOR'd with the destination MAC address. The same bonded device is selected for each destination MAC address, providing load balancing and fault tolerance.

>3: Broadcast. All packets are transmitted on both bonded interfaces, providing fault tolerance.

>4: 802.3ad (Dynamic Link Aggregation). Creates aggregated groups that share the same speed and duplex settings. This mode requires a switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad dynamic links. The dvice used for an outgoing packet is selected by the transmit hash policy (by default, a simple XOR). This policy can be changed via the xmit_hash_policy option. NOTE: Check the 802.3ad standard to ensure that your transmit policy is 802.3ad-compliant. In particular, check section 43.2.4 for packet mis-ordering requirements. Non-compliance tolerance may vary between different peer implementations.

>5: Balance TLB (Transmit Load Balancing). Outgoing traffic is distributed according to the current load and queue on each bonded device. Incoming traffic is received by the current device.

>6: Balance ALB (Adaptive Load Balancing). Both outgoing and incoming traffic is load-balanced like outgoing traffic in mode 5. Incoming load balancing is governed by ARP negotiation. The bonding driver intercepts the ARP replies sent by the appliance and overwrites the source hardware address with the unique hardware address of one of the bonded devices. Different clients will therefore use different hardware addresses for the appliance.