Eugene,
The example on the wiki although usefull for people who can’t get ECMP working properly will do nothing for people who use a transparent proxy. Do you have a good load balancing example that uses Mikrotik’s internal proxy server?
kind regards,
eugenevdm
actually i think eugne is right,
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Improved_Load_Balancing_over_Multiple_Gateways
is the answer to all these problems, i have not tested it but i think it will work reading through it…the key here was the use of:
/ ip firewall mangle
add chain=prerouting in-interface=Local connection-state=new nth=1,1,0
action=mark-connection new-connection-mark=odd passthrough=yes comment=“”
disabled=no
the connection state=New is the key
i will test when i can and report back.
tks
–THREAD SOLVED AND SOLUTION TESTED –
–THREAD SOLVED AND SOLUTION TESTED –
ok i tested it (SEE WIKI LINK ABOVE) and it works GREAT!! exactly as advertised / needed…again i think the missing key in everyones attempts before this (and there were ALOT of ppl trying to get this right) was the new-connection filter on the mangle rule
i didnt have any instant messengers around but i tested it with ftp, a few banking and investing secure sites…large http downloads…all ok..i’m getting 2 x 12 mbit cable modems and balencing all my users p2p traffic over that, and keepine very thing else on my fast dsl line
anyway…this should be made a stiki post. Oh and i only had 2 connections but i dont see why you cant expand this for “infinite” connections…amazing! when 8 months ago i paid 1500$ for a 3port load balencer that did not even work right.
joe
jo2jo,
Before you get too happy please remember that traffic originating from the local proxy server goes via the output chain so still this example does nothing for people who use a Mikrotik as a transparent proxy.
thanks,
eugenevdm
Hi. I haven’t been around here much lately. For me, I’d GLADLY hire a consultant or attend training, BUT can someone from MikroTik confirm that the current versions of MT work with both Transparent Caching Proxy and with Multiple Gateways at the same time?
It worked perfectly for us in version 2.7, but our cache drive occasional was having errors and having to have it’s index rebuilt. The MT suggested solutions was to upgrade to 2.8, which did fix that issue, but Load Balancing with Transparent Proxy has never worked since.
Can anyone confirm that the current instructions do in fact allow proper load balancing with transparent proxy?
Thank you.
I don’t think anyone from Mikrotik is going to answer you, so I’ll give it my best shot:
Yes it’s possible to load balance and transparently proxy port 80 using ECMP.
No it’s not reliable because large downloads break.
why? only if you do multithreaded downloads afaik
All downloads break unless you use a download manager. It usually breaks after 2 MB and 6 MB, but this varies. It never goes much above 6 MB though.
Why would that be? Again, being new here, is that a general Mikrotik doesn’t answer questions thing, or just a ‘‘when asking about transparent proxy / load balancing’’ thing? 
No generally Mikrotik tries to answer questions, especially new questions. But old difficult questions just linger.
OK, thanx. This problem would fall into the old/difficult category then. That’s OK then - I just wanted to know if any solution had come up. It used to work perfectly for us in 2.7, but has never since then. 
OK, now I know. Thanx.
Well I would still suggest you try it. I have heard some isolated reports where is works. It could really depend on your network configuration. For example, I have heard this works:
Internet ↔ Public IP Router 1 ↔ MT with transparent proxy, NAT and ECMP ↔ Clients
Internet ↔ Public IP Router 2 ↔
but this definitely does not work for me, i.e. broken downloads:
Internet ↔ NAT Router 1 ↔ MT with transparent proxy and ECMP ↔ Cilents
Internet ↔ NAT Router 2 ↔