Hi guys,
i’m trying to bond 4 different 3G connections. I read quite a bit about this topic but now i’m very confused.
Is bonding even possible in this case?
What about the different speeds of the different 3G connections. Is this a problem?
Cause in some tutorials they mention that bonding is only possible with connections with the same transfer speed. And this is definitely not the case for 3G connections.
Thanks in advance for your help. I really appreciate it.
Best regards
Tom
Do you have something on the carrier side of the connections which supports bonding?
I’ve never attempted to bond 3G connections but my concern is the jitter and speed differences between these connections. You will probably use connections from different providors and they will vary in signal strengh and quality. In the router in the other site that is reverting the bound will receive many unordered packets. Since the chance of jitter and packets out of order increase with the number of connections, 4 connections might be too much.
But it is just my speculation. When you learn how to bond them and put it in production, please, share with us your performance results.
@CelticComms. Yes my plan would be to install a second routerboard in a serverroom. As far as i understand this second routerboard is obligatory for bonding.
The idea isn’t new and there is a commercial solution for example from http://www.viprinet.com/. But for my experiments this is way too expensive.
@kurtkraut. Big thanks for your input. I have the same concerns as you. For the beginning i can start with bonding only two connections and increase if i’m successful.
Which routerboard can you guys recommend for first, simple experiments (lets say three 3G connections max.).
What still troubles me:
In principle bonding is possible with Mikrotik routerboards. But the major problem are the different properties of the different mobile connections.
Why exactly ist this? Isn’t it possible to number the outgoing packets to ensure that the other station knows the right order?
Thanks a lot
Tom
From the description this would mean that the consolidation point is at the end of very different channels considering bandwidth, latency and jitter. In short, I don’t think RouterOS has the tools for that job!
Mmmmhhh, ok. Thats not very good news. But still interesting.
What about the balance-tlb mode? Different bandwidths are no problem for this mode (as i understand form the desrciptions), so one problem less.
Why exactly are jitter and latency such big problems and what would one need to solve these problems?
Thanks again guys, i’m really curious about this problem 
Chaos, I recommend the below article. It may not be exactly what you are looking for, but it gives a clear picture of how to set up load balancing with multiple 3g usb dongles connected to a routerboard:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/400897-MikroTik-RouterBoard-and-USB-3G-Modems/page1