Load Balance Multiple ISP connection

RouterOS General
1

I am planning to setup a home network with multiple GBPS connections. Currently have 2x GBPS connections which have their own independent router and network. What I am planning to do is buying a ‘Mikrotik hEX’ which can provide Load Balancing/Failover for the two connections.

The current setup looks as follows:

Also to eliminate the PON devices, will use a single switch with SFP ports. Switch VLANs will bridge ISP connection to the Routers WAN interfaces. The WAN connections will be load balanced and exposed as a single connection on to the LAN interface, which will be connected to another VLAN on the switch. As shown in the diagram below.




Note: > The diagram shows 4 WANs which I am planning for future upgrade once the need arises. For that I will be buying a more capable router with enough horse power. For now I will be sticking with 2 connections.

I have two questions:

  1. Is the plan going to work in the first place? I have only done setup for basic home networks before this. I have come up with this design after a lot of reading but that is it. I have zero practical experience with more complex networks.
  2. Will Mikrotik hEX and Mikrotik CRS112-8G-4S-IN suffice for this? I know I will be limited by line speed of 1Gbps, which should be fine. I am mainly looking for Auto Failover/Load Balancing to reduce network downtime with close to 1 Gbps links on LANs.

Any other inputs to improve upon this are welcome.

2

It depends on which load balancing scheme and firewall rules you intend to implement. But if I read this right you want to load balance and route 2 gbps+ simultaneously. You’ll need to get at least an RB4011, probably a CCR if you don’t want to bottleneck your line speeds. It also comes down to you traffic type.

That said, this should work no problem.

3

That will only work with active PON SFPs which handle all of the PON framing, authentication, encoding, etc. presenting a 1000BASE-X interface to the Mikrotik. Dumb PON SFPs which only contain the optical-electrical conversion will not work as Mikrotiks do not handle PON directly.

4

As long as the switch is not involved in the routing of traffic, should be good with all the other caveats as noted.