How to do the NIC Bridging in RHEL6?

Network Bridging:

For Network bridging bridge-utils package must be installed, You can check that by below command

#rpm  -q  bridge-utils

The NetworkManager tool can create problems in bridged based networking so disable it as follows

#service NetworkManager stop

#chkconfig NetworkManager off

Run the below command to create the sample bridging file
#cp  /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0    /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0

Do the following changes in ifcfg-br0 file

#vim   /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0

DEVICE=br0

ONBOOT=yes

BOOTPROTO=none

TYPE=Bridge

IPADDR=x.x.x.x

NETMASK=x.x.x.x

And update the ifcfg-eth0 file as follow

#vim   /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0

ONBOOT=yes

BOOTPROTO=none

TYPE=Ethernet

BRIDGE=br0

 Now restart the network services for changes to take effect

#service network restart

#chkconfig network on