Bonding through a bridge

I am assuming my failure is due to the bridge being used to make the link but I’d appreciate any information from others. Here’s my setup:

RB450 < 2x411A’s <–WIRELESS–> 2x411A’s > RB450

A customer requested a link that could run full duplex or fall back into half duplex but they also wanted 100% redundant hardware on both ends. I proposed the above configuration as if the 450 failed, they could just plug one of the 411’s in on each end and use them to bridge their network. Likewise, if any of the 411’s failed, the 450 was doing the balancing so it could just shove the traffic all over on to the single link. The 411’s are setup AP Bridge on one end and station pseudo on the other. They work great for just a bridge, I can plug them each into their respective 450 and if I setup bonding with just active-backup, it works great. The problem comes when I try to use 802.3ad, balance-alb, or any other balancing method, the link fails. Sometimes I get very very large packet loss (95% or higher), other times it just totally refuses to work. I am assuming the issue is with trying to pass the balancing through the bridges in the 411’s as AP Bridge or Station Pseudobridge. I have had a similar setup before using just RB600’s with the wifi cards directly in the 600 that is running the bonding and it was successful, but with the cards down stream it totally refuses to work.

Any ideas folks? I shipped this off to be installed this morning since I pulled my hair out until the wee hours of today trying to make it work and finally decided just to let it be an active-backup link. I’d love to get the bonding to work in a balance mode so I could see the 120+ mbit single direction UDP throughput that should result but I’ve had no success. Any way to trick this thing into working?

Thanks

expunge -
Well it really sounds like you have the bonding setup incorrectly… I have a couple of similiar setups with VRRP at each each end, then a dual wireless system in a second box off to the main site, dual wireless box, VRRP. The other setups do not have the VRRP but do have separate boxes for the wireless…

I have only one that is bridged - the AP / Station mode ones seem to work better for bonding - the last bridge setup is due to be replaced soon. I have found that bonding really only seems to work well with balance-rr mode vice any other mode. I am not using pseudo bridge - just bridge.

Bonding is setup on each interface pointing to the other only in the wireless - not the ether interfaces.

If you really need dual redundant hardware - use a pair of 450s at each end and VRRP to your 411s. Use the 411s in Ap / Station mode, bond each wireless interface, use balancing-rr, you can also add an EoIP tunnel on top of the bonded pipeline for layer two connectivity…

Anyway - some ideas for you to consider…

R/