When will this be released on the switch chip? Bought 3 top of the line switches to find out they are missing the feature I want:
IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation
I know it doesn’t help - but I find mikrotiks own balance rr etc to be much better link aggregation tech. 802.3ad talking with Cisco’s only ever seem to be ‘per-flow load balancing’ which gives you not great balance between the links vs balance rr which is meant to give per packet load balancing and allow for actual aggregate throughput.
That is just my opinion though and it has been mentioned in the wiki for a while that 802.3ad is not available on switch chip.
It’s not that 802.3ad is not available; it is supported by the hardware, but MT hasn’t yet implemented it in the software (from what I’ve read).
Fran66, unfortunately, this doesn’t help you, but this is a much discussed topic on these forums. Less than 30 minutes of research on the forum would have given you the answer before you made your purchase. You could also have contacted MT support and asked about feature support.
Not trying to throw stones, just advocating due diligence.
Yeap my bad,
Currently ussing with balance-rr and its fine, just a few servers that need 2 Gbps iscsi speed.
Thanks
You are using switch load-balancing with iSCSI? That’s a big no-no. iSCSI has it’s own forms of load-balancing and should not be combined with switch load-balancing unless certain very specific cases and network topology configurations.
Just configure all the clients and iSCSI server to use round-robin over it’s interfaces (The iSCSI way) and all should be fine. If you are using ESXi, be sure to tune it’s iSCSI parameters to distribute the IO over the links per IO or 10 IO’s for instance. Per default it’s 1000 I believe which (again in most situations) does not saturate your links.
Was looking to connect my synology NAS over multiple bonded nics (it has 4) but It only mentions 802.3ad. is it possible to config it that was on the NAS and use another option on my CRS226? Or do I basically just have to wait for Mikrotik to support 802.3ad in hardware?
I believe a software update has made it available. The limitation is no longer noted on the wiki.
I don’t have a CRS to trial it myself though so maybe email support-at-mikrotik.com first and ask them.
Can be done 
I do use Synology with 802.3ad and CRS125 myself 
/interface ethernet switch trunk
add member-ports=ether01,ether02,ether03,ether04 name=trunk1All done in Switch hardware, so no CPU impact or bottleneck.
Well this is excellent! I was following the older instructions (drop ports from default switch, add then to a new interface, then bridge that to the old main switch) and I only got to 40MB/sec with switch CPU was at 100%
I gave up on that, and instead tried splitting my tasks up on individually IP’d ports, and that brought it’s own set of problems on the NAS side (packages didn’t take to the IP I wanted)!!
I will try again tonight, thanks again!!!
It depends on firmware so I would recommend running at least 6.17 or newer (dont remember exactly when that feature was introduced)
I first started using it from 6.17, and please note that I have CRS125, but it should work the very same way on CRS226
I am at 6.18
I tried the code as quoted but I got an error that “input does not match any value of port”
the ports I tried to add are still listed as master port of main switch, is this appropriate?
looking at the wiki here (It seems it was last edited today??)
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:CRS_examples#Trunking
It says
The Trunking in the Cloud Router Switches provides static link aggregation groups with hardware automatic failover and load balancing. IEEE802.3ad and IEEE802.1ax compatible Link Aggregation Control Protocol is not supported yet.
yet I try to do as you got working.
I am trying to make a 4 port trunk group on my CRS226 using ports 19-22 (renamed in winbox to eth19-eth22)
just like every other port on my switch, these four ports are set to the same master port (eth01)
confirmed by issues these commands in the terminal
/interface ethernet
set eth19 master-port=eth01
set eth20 master-port=eth01
set eth21 master-port=eth01
set eth22 master-port=eth01
/interface ethernet switch trunk
but it will not establish a link to synology
Did you add any trunk members?
Mkay, then CRS226 obviosly doesnt support it (yet). 
I assumed the link I presented was for all CRS, not a specific model. Was I wrong? I didn’t find anything that indicated the 125 should have features that the 226 does not. That link seems to indicate that yours should not have the feature either, so I am confused.
Do you have the 4 ports in your 802.3ad all set to the same master port as your other non bonded ports?
I forgot to paste mine in but I did have a line like this
add name=trunk1 member-ports=eth19,eth20,eth21,eth22
and it accepted it.
So is that all there is to it? is ther a config dump or something like that you can give me from yours that might give me a clue?
Synology does not accept this connection at all, and I have to pull 3 of the cables to it or I lose all connection. On your synology, does it confirm it is happy with the lacp link?
Yes.
Well, I misunderstood you then, that it did not.
Should be, my example is pasted above, there absolutely nothing else involved.
Mine works happily (RS814+), what model do you have (it shouldnt actually matter).
You can also try to change config on Syno, from 802.3ad to “Network Fault Tolerance” and see if it works then with all cables connected. 
I`am pretty much out of ideas, why it doesnt work on your setup…
I have an 1813+ Synology NAS
Network fault tolerant might work, but frankly as I understand that setting, its only for increased uptime, not for any increased simultaneous performance. I am thinking about adding in another switch I have that supports 802.3ad, then see if the microtik will connect to it over a trunk. I have also emailed support to see if the CRS125 has features that the CRS226 does not.
thank you very much for the assistance!
You are absolutely correct, but it is just for testing, that your Synology actually works with all 4 interfaces connected.
Also please note 802.3ad is not something magical that provides you and 4x network performance boost instantly and always.
Increase is only visible with multiple concurrent threads, etc…
What version Firmware your Synology has?
Maybe it is Synology bug not Mikrotik issue…
No idea, but as far as I know Switch chip is a little different on those models.
I would wait with buyng another switch, if you could, maybe support has some bright ideas, why it doesnt work in your case.
Naah, I didnt actually help much, just shared my own experience and little knowledge what I have gained since I bought this device as my first Mikrotik
Understood, but I will have multiple concurrent threads, so it could help sometimes.
The Current (4493 Update 3)
Could be, looked into it, didn’t see anything on that side. I have a couple other smart switches that I think support 802.3ad LACP, so I am thinking about trying that out.
I own a couple unused at the moment, so it would just be time.
but you can set interface bonding (4 interface, 802.3ad) and bridge it into switch master port
Which will kill the whole point doing that, bridging means traffic would pass CPU and as it is not powerful enough you get even less troughput than running single interface.
It’s true, and it works, I tried it, but CPU involvement limits it to 40MB/sec on a pair of bonded 1GBE links. This is only about 20% of what you would hope for
So while you could do it for increased up time, the performance price to is just too high. This is why we have to keep asking Mikrotik to implement it in hardware!!!