Ok, so here’s my setup. I’ve got a Routerboard connected to 2 AP’s on ether2 and ether3. These AP’s have 1 client each connected to them. These clients are connected to another routerboard on ether2 and ether3. I’ve enabled bonding on ether2 and ether3 on both routerboards. Note that my two wireless PtP links aren’t located on the routerboards, they are external CPE’s connected to the routerboards via ethernet. Link 1 is connected to ether2 on both routerboards and link 2 is connected to ether 3 on both routerboards. Should I be able to get roughly double the throughput than one of the individual links can provide?
I’ve been unable to get any of the bonding modes to work correctly except for “active-backup”. “balance-rr” does allow some traffic to get through, but there are lots of timeouts and the link is unusable really. Both of my links are 2.4GHz, one is on channel 1 and the other is on channel 11. I realize this will cause some interference since the 2 AP’s are so close to each other, but it should work better than it is. Maybe I am trying to do something that can’t be done so easily, but has anyone tried something like this before? I’d appreciate any help I can get.
IMHO the best setup for “bonding” wireless links is using OSPF. You dedicate one radio to transmitting and the other to receiving and you get the added benefit of failover with OSPF.
The only thing with that is, you lose the ability to get twice the throughput in one direction right? Unfortunately, for WISP’s most traffic is one direction since there is a lot more download traffic as opposed to upload. I might give it a try though to see how well it works.
Theoretically, should wireless bonding work with external CPE’s (as apposed to using cards on the routerboards)? I have everything bridged together (routerboards only have one IP) and then the external CPE’s have their own IP addresses in the same subnet as the routerboards.
Ok I followed directions from the first link you posted except I changed the IP addresses. Plus instead of using wlan1 & wlan2 I’m using ether2 & ether 3. I feel like I have it set up pretty close to right, but it’s not working properly. Here is the config I have for it:
Then I have 2 external links in between that are configured like this: 192.168.1.2 on ether2 of RB1 - 192.168.1.3 on ether2 of RB2 and 192.168.2.2 on ether3 of RB1 - 192.168.2.3 on ether3 of RB2.
From RB2 I can ping 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.2.1, but I can’t ping 10.0.1.233. Likewise, from RB1 I can ping 192.168.1.4 and 192.168.2.4, but not 10.0.1.234.
It’s like it doesn’t know how to route through the links… Anyone know what I’m doing wrong or have any ideas?