I was searching for combining 2 WAN from ISP to get more available bandwith in total. I found many articles and tried also some of them. But all ended in “Load Balancing” and not “Bonding”. Is there any article that describes the aggregation of both WAN? What I need is the full speed in one connection for the users. I used a pfsense router before, there it is working like a charm. I can see the result immediately in a speed test. Not so on the mikrotik, I still see only one connection respectively the speed of one connection. The speed is not aggregated. Could this scenario be done with mikrotik, or could it handle only “Load Balancing”?
It would be great if someone could give me a resource to find out more. All I found was not “Bonding” as it is in my understanding … - Thank you very much.
Bonding requires fragmentation and defragmentation at either end of the 2 links, for a single TCP stream to utilise both links bandwidth at the same time you’d need something talking the same bonding protocol on the other end of the 2 links.
If both of your links are from the same ISP, this may be possible, if they are not, it is nigh on impossible. You could potentially run EoIP or other tunnel technologies to a remote point in a DC such as a VPS, and do the aggregation there, however you can lose a lot of overhead and if the 2 links are not within a tight margin of error for latency, you’ll possibly end up with worse performance than a single link. 2 simple internet connections can not be ‘bonded’, only load balanced.
Your pfSense box would not be able to change this fact.
thanks for your explanation. Could you explain why a speed test (www.speedtest.net) on the pfsense box shows the double / aggreated speed of both links. If I config the mikrotik with load balancing / bonding like explained in different articles it shows only the speed of one link, although the interface screen shows that the bonding interface is used?
I don’t understand this? The pfsense does in my understanding what it should, the mikrotik not. Or I am false in understanding what it should be, but I only compare the speed that speedtest.net shows for the connections. Beside fact, the wan / internet connection come from 2 different ISP.
Would be great if you could give me again a short feedback / explanation for better understanding what’s going on …
At a guess, although i’ve never tried this myself, pfSense might be doing some more aggresive load balancing.
Speedtest.net actually uses multi-threaded connections to help give more real-world results. It is entirely possible, although I thought unlikely, that pfSense is sharing even those multi connections across both links and speedtest.net is happy to share the session/test to 2 different IP’s and aggregate the results, so ultimately you are not getting a single aggregated speed, you are getting multi-connection load balancing.
If these two WAN links from the same ISP, ask him for giving you layer 2 links with single IP address. You will get aggregated bonded link from him with LACP/PagP/Static ethernet channel based on single vlan. From hardware side it will be 2 ports and from logic side it will be the single IP address over vlan.
It depends on the type of randomization you are using.
I am using random, and speedtest.net combines both links because it uses multiple connections, so some connections start on WAN1, and some connections start on WAN2.