Mac Desktops connected to a MikroTik Router 1100AHx2
The network has the gateway connected on the 1st ethernet interface of the Router 1100AHx2
Upstair :
Mac Desktops and Mac Mini Server connected through a MikroTik CRS125-24G-1S
From this setup i want to link the MikroTik Router and Switch together with 2 Gigabit ports using LACP.
I want to get 2GB of bandwidth between these 2.
So i’ve tried setting up a bonding interface using the 802.3ad protocol and it worked but…
From my Mac Desktop (connected downstair), i tried to download or upload files to the Server (upstair), so i used the bonding link.
It started fast and then just lagged, freezed, continued, freezed again, etc… until it finally retrieved the file…
I recently bought CRS226 switch to link to my CCR1009 while the brochure claimed 802.3ad(x) compliance I did not find out until after purchase ($300US) and reading the wiki that this is not yet implemented. Seems to be the norm here, show some nice specs …and then maybe actually get to implementing them later.
Was going to say I am pretty sure LACP is all done in software on both of these platforms at this point. As was mentioned the CRS will support it in hardware in the future.
Between that and the bridge on the 1100AHx2 lots of CPU hit is probably the problem.
Unless they snuck in a feature update without telling anyone, the LACP that is support on the switch chip does not provide bandwidth aggregation, so your 2x 1Gb interfaces are still only providing a maximum of 1Gb of bandwidth to your server. The LACP is only providing path redundancy and possibly load-balancing. At the present time, bandwidth aggregation is only provided by the CPU using the Bonding feature, which is very resource intensive. Running more than a few bonded interfaces typically pushes the CPU utilization higher that most people are comfortable with.
Of course, LACP for bandwidth aggregation is going by the wayside in the industry at large due to the affordability of 10Gb network infrastructure. Most servers either ship with 10Gb NICs or have them available for a very low price. I believe that even MikroTik has announced a 12x SFP+ port device is in the works. With that kind of bandwidth available on the cheap, it all comes down to having path redundancy if one link goes down, because few of us actually need more than 10Gb bandwidth to any one server.
If hashing is set to MAC-IP-port you will get some bandwidth increase out of a single host. Only 1Gig per stream though as mentioned. In my experience it balances out pretty well.
Regarding load-balancing with LACP… Mikrotik switches behave exactly the same as other switches with LACP functionality.
You need more than one session to use the extra bandwidth.
Windows 2012/8 with SMB3 supports the ‘multichannel’ feature to achieve higher bandwith with a single action. ‘Under the surface’ it creates more than one session.
So you guys is saying that the switch chip has LACP features with our without making a trunk (Tagged/Untagged) frames and you only need to configure the switchports as “/interface ethernet switch trunk” and add interfaces as member ports, and then configure the other side of the cabeling connections as LACP Active and and LACP Channel will be created?
Are you also sure that you haven’t just configured your devices to talk LACP but they actually can’t form a fully functional LACP link?
could you describe your config and benchmarks (with CPU utilization)? Desiding to buy switch and I will need LACP, so confused on does it supports LACP with other-non-Mikrotik switch/hardware…
