Dear Wolfgang,
I don't know if the "ping" code takes redundand ethernet interfaces into account, i. e. if it will toggle interfaces. I don't even know if this makes sense - "ping" is intended to test if somebody is responding, and it makes probably no sense here to distinguish between the remote ost being down or cable disconnected or interface broken.
It's a differetn issue with a network boot (dhcp, bootp or tftp command) - you expect these to work, and if they are failingit seems a good idea to try an alternative inteface if there is one.
It works as you suggested, ping doesn't use redundant interfaces but tftp certainly does, initially it times out the first time it tries a transfer (which initially threw me!) but the second time it works nicely. Exactly what I was looking for,
thank you.
Mark.