Hello Experts,

We have a main link which is running at 100 Mbps to our up-link, this link is now getting maxed and we have another backup link which is good for like 50 Mbps, both are connected to Mikrotik router, but all is in Layer 2. These are Wireless links and we cannot push more then this on a single link.

I thought bonding, but its not equal, so would be hard, but we need more incoming traffic then outgoing, outgoing can be max 50, but if we can get 150 incoming this could solve our problem.

Any ideas on what to implement here ? so that we can use both links ? and get aggregate with fail over.

I am also ready to pay up an expert who can make this work, with PCC or Bonding.

many thanks.

Here you will get some info :

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Load_Balancing

Thanks a lot for the link, its a good start, but if somebody has more idea pls share.

just my opinion it depends on your needs, NTH masquerade load balancing it adds up your bandwidth if you have 100mb and a 50mb it will add up to 150mb if you going to test on speedtest but behind the scene it switching source which is not busy or not. so your getting the source from either the 2 of them.

if using bonding xor your getting the connection on both interface port. live streaming is more better flow request from client on both interface and comeback at both interface.


comment is much appreciated. many thanks

PCC load balancing is one option. How are the wireless links set up at the moment -e.g. chains for RX/TX etc.

wireless link are trango / redline, 2 complete different sets of equipment, using mikrotik just at the end of each of these links. I have seen many examples on PCC but could not relate to here, as its totally layer 2 case. No routing done here, just layer 2.


Point A, ether2 -----------100mbps--------------ether 2 Point B
ether3 -----------50 mbps---------------ether 3

Suggest option is Bonding mode Xor


comment is much appreciated. many thanks

will configure bonding and report back,

thanks for the help.

I have a lab set up with 2 mikrotik 1200, connected 2 ports to each other like below :-

users ether1------RB1200 ether2 ---------------------------------ether2 RB1200 --- ether 1 (INTERNET)
ether3 ---------------------------------ether2

ether2 connected with ether2 is a Trango Link Wireless 100mbps
ether3 connected with ether3 is a Motorola link Wireless 50 mbps link

When testing bandwidth test, i could only get 980mbps one side, with bonding type balance rr or balance xor. We want more bandwidth receive then transmit.

Thanks,

bonding won't help you. you need to use routing. for example, ECMP (like /ip route add gateway=1.1.1.1,1.1.1.1,2.2.2.2, where 1.1.1.1 is gateway for 100mbps link and 2.2.2.2 is gw for 50 mbps)

Thanks Chupaka, I will try that, but any idea if ospf works better here ? if i make it layer 3 network ?

Thanks,

I realised after commenting here that the nature of these links and how they relate to the ISP connection / NAT point (if any) is not clear. Could you make a small diagram to make their role clear?

If your customers are able to create enough upstream traffic that downstream traffic would exceed 100 Mbps if it could then it ought to be possible to offload some of that downstream traffic to the 50 Mbps link. Do you have headroom on the ISP connection?

Sorry guys, i dont know where i was reading, when i missed these 2 comments, one from CelticComms and nokynoky,

Its very easy, we have a wireless link connecting to our ISP, and have a backup link too, in case one has issue we switch to another one without need to change anything as its layer 2, we just connect the other link manually at the moment, and once the main is back we switch back to main link.

As now the main link is nearly maxed we want to offload of load on the backup link, but how to do, we control both sides, have mikrotik installed, but we do not use wireless on routerboard, we have separate devices for that.

I have been using two RB1200 on each end; ether2-ether2 is connected with one link, ether3-ether3 with another. Ether1 on one end goes to my ISP router and the ether1 on the other end connects to my main router using a /30 range. So its all layer 2.

PCC is one option but how can i achieve that, as all my network has one gateway. How can i put some load on other link while maintain the redundancy or failover. I dont need NAT, just plain network.

Many thanks.

you can use bonding over these unequal pipes by creating three EoIP tunnels that run over the two pipes, route two over the 100M and one over the 50M, then bond the 3 EoIPs, each will be close to 50Mbps and get the traffic shared evenly across the pipes with twice as much on the 100Mb as the 50Mb

Thanks Jonmansey, its a good idea, i will give it a go, worth a try ! thanks for the idea..

If possible try to share a little more of the actual config at each end. e.g. - are these layer 2 connections with route entries pointing at interfaceare s? ... or there actually IP allocations on each side. If you have IP numbers on the links then Chupaka's suggestion earlier is relevant - and of course you could always add IP subnets to the links if they are indeed being treated as layer 2 pipes today.

Before doing any of this it would be worth checking that nothing else is a limiting factor for the downstream traffic from the ISP

these are layer 2 with no route entries, we have just bridge at each end, and activate the link as required, when primary goes down we enable the backup link, no IP set.
Yes i am thinking of adding IP numbers and trying to route from both ends, depending on subnet, how route as i would need to configure the box at each end, incoming and outgoing traffic.

anybody !