I want to bond 4 separate ADSL lines into one 8Mb feed. Can I do this with existing RouterOS or do I have to wait until 2.9?
TC
good question, I also would like to know it…
You have to wait until 2.9. In 2.8 you can use load balancing instead.
We’d like to do this for T1s. I wonder if it’s possible to bond them if the T1s are in different locations (with one connected directly to the Mikrotik and the other connected via wireless). Anybody know about this?
actually this is not possible in 2.8 and in 2.9 you will also not be able to get " one 8Mb feed " from four lines. Bonding in 2.9 will make it possible to connect two mikrotik routers via multiple bonded lines, but not combine lines from your provider.
“Bonding is a technology that allows to aggregate multiple ethernet-like interfaces into a single virtual link, thus getting higher data rates and providing failover.”
So, are you saying that the lines must be already bonded by the upstream service provider? If that’s the case I don’t understand why you would need two Mikrotiks.
Cameron
no. what I’m saying is that this works Only between two mikrotiks. you will Not be able to do this with your provider. The bonding we have in 2.9 is only for making high speed point to point connections and backup links, only between mikrotik routers.
ok, here is a link to an earliy version of the manual:
http://www.mikrotik.com/docs/ros/2.9/interface/bonding.frameset
be warned that all that information in the 2.9 manual is not yet complete and might contain a lot of mistakes etc etc.
oo I am a bit confused here. The main thing I am looking at MT for is to load balence (bond??) 2 adsl conections from 2 different ISPs.
Something like:
http://www.xincom.com/twr602.html
http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ShopGroupID=12&CategoryID=48&ProductID=915
Now the stuff at http://www.mikrotik.com/docs/ros/2.8/ip/route.content looks a bit like what I want, however I thought the bonding in 2.9 was a more out of the box solution.
So 2.8 can do what I want?
The thing that concerns me is that what happens with things like a ftp session, so you would log on via one isp, and then start using the next ISP (eg dif IPs) and so on, the same for news, email etc.
One solution I can see is just to use 1 ISp for each protacol, but thats a bit naff as there are several users, so I would like each user to be able to utilize eack link as appropriate.
OK, let’s say I have a Mikrotik sitting at my ISP (which I do) and this Mikrotik is on the backbone network of the ISP. Then I have 2 ADLS lines with this ISP and I setup a Mikrotik on the remote side of these 2 ADSL lines to do this bonding. Will there be a way to route internet traffic from the remote site to the internet? And will there be a limit on the number of Ethernet ports I can bond?
don’t mix up load balancing with bonding. they are two different things - bonding combines links (it also does load balancing and failover by the way) and makes speed twice as fast (or almost that), but load balancing makes ‘load be balanced’ 
load balancing is available for some time now, you just specify two (or more) default gateways like this:
/ip route add gateway=1.1.1.1,2.2.2.2,3.3.3.3
and then each new connection will be made through a different gateway. if you want this - you can do it with any version
but bonding can work only if at both ends your have mikrotik routers
Ah right, ta.
The problem I see with doing Load Balencing the way surgested this. My usenet account requires a log on and it notes the IP u logged on with and then if u change IP, which look like it could happen with the above method it refuses to let you access it.
I think load balencing would be good with accererators like getright and web pages, but as above would fail for things like usenet, mail etc.. I did think to see if it is possiable to see to use just one of the links for a certain type of traffice. However this is not really what I want as the is no reasion why different users cannot use both link so long as each user just uses 1 link for say there email sesion.
It seems you can buy boxes to do this (above) can MT do this, or am I just wrong about this been a problem?
policy routing (see manual)
Yep, now if I could only find it in 2.9b8 
Anyone know where its gone?
We have several ISPs who offer a bonded service - we would need something like a Cisco 2811 with 4 ASDL WICs or a linux solution as per:
http://www.freestuffjunction.co.uk/bondedcd.shtml
But what I want to see is a MikroTik equivalent - not a debate about load balancing.
TC
Now policy routing looks different. To set up it, you should do following:
In Firewall mangle you should mark flow for which you want change gateway. For example you want all traffic which comes from 4.4.4.2 to 1.1.1.0/24 network pass through 2.2.2.2 gateway.
[admin@mikrotik] ip firewall mangle> pr
Flags: X - disabled, I - invalid, D - dynamic
0 chain=prerouting src-address=4.4.4.2 dst-address=1.1.1.0/24
action=mark-routing routing-mark=test
then in static route you add gateway for this flow through which it will go:
[admin@mikrotik] ip route static-route> print
0 dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 prefsrc=0.0.0.0 gateway=10.1.0.1 distance=0 scope=30
target-scope=10 check-gw=no
1 dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 prefsrc=0.0.0.0 gateway=2.2.2.2 distance=0 scope=30
target-scope=10 check-gw=no routing-mark=test
All marked traffic will go through 2.2.2.2 and other through 10.1.0.1.
Can this be done? if so is it only poss with 2.9?
Thanks
I’ve been following this discussion and now i’m really confused… i just want to know how to connect 2 or more cable modems with static ip’s together to distribute the load from my mail and web servers thru my mikrotik router… because as you know cable modem upload capability sucks big time…i’m a newbie to this …
i would appreciate ANY help with this.. please don’t tell me to add 2 default gateways because :
- i don’t know how
- my isp only provided 1 gateway address so how can i add more than 1 gateway if i don’t have it???
thanks
sheldon steele