A software-only facility for combining multiple physical network interfaces into a single logical link for redundancy or higher throughput, similar in purpose to bonding but with more of the policy logic pushed into userspace. It has been part of Linux since around 2011 and is used on servers that need link aggregation or failover.
Worth keeping but flagging its niche: upstream development is still active, with new features landing as recently as 2026, so there is no removal effort in flight. However, Red Hat has marked teaming as deprecated for new deployments in RHEL 9 and steers users toward the older, more widely used bonding driver, so most new setups should prefer bonding while existing teaming configurations continue to be supported.
repository signals
10files
4,220source lines
51commits, 5y
+438 / −363lines added / removed, 5y
29authors, 5y
monthly commits · 2021-04-21 → 2026-04-21 · 51 total · active in 29/61 months
Upstream activity is current and substantive: April 9, 2026 net-next patch adds a new team port option, indicating active maintenance rather than removal.
RHEL 9 documents network teams as deprecated for new deployments and recommends configuring a bond instead.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
This is a real kernel driver directory, but it implements a virtual netdevice/teaming facility rather than hardware support. lore_file_timeline on drivers/net/team/team_core.c returned fresh 2026 patch traffic with multiple feature additions, so there is no evidence here of an upstream removal push; that argues against deprecate/remove. Web search surfaced current Red Hat release notes showing network teams deprecated for new deployments in favor of bonding, which supports low present-day deployment and bonding as the natural replacement. URLs were obtained via lore_file_timeline and web search.