wireless bonding doesn't work for me

I can’t get wireless bonding to work. This is link between two sites under my control, no internet connection - just private LAN for one corporation, “point to point”.


I’m able to achieve 25Mbit halfduplex with each radio currently running nstreme2, I would like to get 50Mbit halfduplex which would be shared to download or upload direction according to immediate need. Thus, one second I would like to see 40Mbit or so download (user receives mail with attachment), another second I would like to see 40Mbit upload (user sends mail with attachment). Current links are not symmetrically loaded, one direction is loaded far more than the other one and I would like to “strenghten up” the loaded one by providing more capacity.


Example : longterm averages are 10Mbit/s download ; 23Mbit upload. The latter one is almost everytime full and people are experiencing slowness.


I saw somewhere that bonding should be done with WDS (not bridge or AP/station modes).

Can anyone provide working examples of wireless bonding? Version used is 2.9.19. Please don’t post links to manual.

thnx!

set all wireless cards in ‘bridge’ mode, enable wds, and put wds interfaces into bond.
Eugene

Eugene, will you be posting details of your “super wireless” demonstration some time soon?
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Super_wireless_test

Eugene you mean, that WLAN1, WLAN2 both go into bridge, WDS static is made. Then we bond the WDS1 and WDS2. Should we also put the bond interface into the bridge? WHat about ether1 interface? Correct me please:
WLAN1, WLAN2, Ether1 and Bond1 all go into bridge!!!

No. I think he meant set all wireless interface modes to Bridge (not AP, AP Bridge, or Client, but Bridge).

After you do that, add a WDS1 between the local WLAN1 and the remote WLAN1, then add a WDS2 between the local WLAN2 and the remote WLAN2.

Once you have done all the above, put WDS1 and WDS2 as bonding slaves.

This configuration must be done also in the 2 routers? (“Once you have done all the above, put WDS1 and WDS2 as bonding slaves”)

The 2 first’s router wireless interfaces must be in bridge mode.
The 2 second’s router wireless interfaces must be again in bridge or station mode?
Can i have connection with bridge-bridge mode?

Sorry for my English

Gaougalos,
yes, configuration related to both routers.
W1, W2 - router1 wireless interfaces;
W3, W4 - router2 wireless interfaces;

a) set mode=bridge for W1,W2,W3,W4 interfaces;
b) establish WDS link between W1 and W3, respectively W2 and W4.
WDS allows to establish communication between bridge<–>bridge routers.
c) put W1 and W2 wds interfaces as ‘interface bonding’ slaves, the same on router two W3 and W4 WDS interface as bondging slaves.

Thank you my friend very much.
Now i understand.

could any one can post the full bonding configuration here. i still not success bonding 2 wireless link.

hi all, this my configuration…could any one correct it, i still not success bonding 2 wireless link. tq

[admin@MikroTik] interface> pr
Flags: X - disabled, D - dynamic, R - running

NAME TYPE RX-RATE TX-RATE MTU

0 R ether1 ether 0 0 1500
1 R wlan1 wlan 0 0 1500
2 R wlan2 wlan 0 0 1500
3 R wds1 wds 0 0 1500
4 R wds2 wds 0 0 1500
5 R bridge1 bridge 0 0 1500
6 R bridge2 bridge 0 0 1500
7 R eoip-tunnel2 eoip-tunnel 0 0 1500
8 R bonding1 bonding 0 0 1500
9 R eoip-tunnel1 eoip-tunnel 0 0 1500

[admin@MikroTik] interface bonding> pr
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
0 R name=“bonding1” mtu=1500 mac-address=FE:2C:DB:B5:83:4D arp=enabled
slaves=eoip-tunnel1,eoip-tunnel2 mode=balance-rr primary=none
link-monitoring=none arp-interval=100ms mii-interval=100ms
down-delay=0s up-delay=0s lacp-rate=30secs


0 R name=“wlan1” mtu=1500 mac-address=00:15:6D:63:29:88 arp=enabled
disable-running-check=no interface-type=Atheros AR5413
radio-name=“00156D632988” mode=bridge ssid=“ERA” area=“”
frequency-mode=superchannel country=no_country_set antenna-gain=0
frequency=2462 band=2.4ghz-b scan-list=default rate-set=default
supported-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps
supported-rates-a/g=6Mbps,9Mbps,12Mbps,18Mbps,24Mbps,36Mbps,48Mbps,
54Mbps
basic-rates-b=1Mbps basic-rates-a/g=6Mbps max-station-count=2007
ack-timeout=dynamic tx-power-mode=default noise-floor-threshold=default
periodic-calibration=default periodic-calibration-interval=60
burst-time=disabled dfs-mode=none antenna-mode=ant-a wds-mode=static
wds-default-bridge=none wds-default-cost=100 wds-cost-range=50-150
wds-ignore-ssid=no update-stats-interval=disabled
default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=yes default-ap-tx-limit=0
default-client-tx-limit=0 proprietary-extensions=post-2.9.25
hide-ssid=no security-profile=default disconnect-timeout=3s
on-fail-retry-time=100ms hw-retries=15 preamble-mode=both
compression=no allow-sharedkey=no

[admin@MikroTik] interface bridge port> pr
Flags: X - disabled, I - inactive, D - dynamic

INTERFACE BRIDGE PRIORITY PATH-COST

0 wlan1 bridge1 128 10
1 wds2 bridge1 128 10
2 wlan2 bridge2 128 10
3 wds1 bridge2 128 10

wireless bonding does NOT work correctly at all. This is not fault of mikrotik, it’s problem of hardware layer, etc. too many things influence quality of tcp/ip bonding on wireless…

btw, it’s reported that ethernet bonding works and works OK exactly as expected. But not with mikrotik…

forget the idea of wireless bonding, rent a fiber. We have spent so much time with this… even Eugene’s example of super-trooper 310Mbit wireless throughput shows you big traces of instable throughput for download/upload channels. And that was on table in room, not on roof competing with other subjects for RF band.

abc123 wrote:

wireless bonding does NOT work correctly at all. This is not fault of mikrotik, it’s problem of hardware layer, etc. too many things influence quality of tcp/ip bonding on wireless… forget the idea of wireless bonding, rent a fiber.

What about bonding a WDS interface and an ethernet interface? We are bridging several MTs using 802.11a radios to create a rudimentary mesh, sharing one MT’s ethernet feed. We would like to be able to connect ethernet to others, where available, both to offload traffic from the mesh, and to provide some amount of fail-over. Insights welcome.

abc123 -
What I found that seems to work - and ChangeIP might jump in on this as well, is look at what rate the wireless connections will connect at consistently…then set the rate for one below that in the configured rate tab. I also include the one just below that as well as the basic 6mbps (802.11a). Like this - the radios connect at 54mbps, set your configured rates at 48mbps, 36mbps and basic the 6mbps. One other thing I do - use the simple queue and set the rate per interface about 10% lower than the upper rate 48mbps - 10% = 43mbps. This gives the interfaces some ‘head room’ when working at the maximum speed to receive acks, etc across the wireless link.

Also a trick that ChangeIP uses frequently is to set in firewall / nat;

chain=dstnat action=redirect to-ports=0-65535 dst-address=xx.xx.xx.14 dst-port=1701 protocol=udp

dst-address is one of your wireless IP addresses, so you have to set one for each interface IP in the RB, since you have two cards there would be two entires like this in each router. This sets up and maintains a route table entry for the IPs in question along with the associated interface. Most helpful in maintaing ‘order’ in the router… :slight_smile:

I don’t understand what is the dst-nat trick useful for.
can you explain more in detail, please?

The dst-nat creates and maintains the correct address / gateway relationship in the routing table of the router.

For some reason certain packets/datagrams /whatever you want to call them, end up going out the wrong gateway. When using this ‘hint’ that issue disappears.

I could go in to some of the workings of routing - but that is something you need to learn if you are going to get deeper in to why something works this way or that way. See the references Mikotik has provided…