TP-LINK TL-R470T+

It probably won't do what you expect.

Load balancing isn't very useful unless you have multiple users/sessions. It certainly won't act as a single 168/32 connection would.

Details of your expectations/use case would help.
 
You appear to be asking for connection bonding.

If you plug four connections into a router like that you're load balancing. Under some circumstances that can achieve a similar result, but it isn't the same thing. It doesn't give you a single faster connection.
 
The connection will only ever go as fast as the fastest connection allows. It doesn't work as you think it will. "Real" bonding is done at carrier level which does enable what you are trying to simulate but even then it's getting used less and less and requires full carrier cooperation with specific kit within an exchange or DC.
All you will achieve is that 4 PC's could download at 42Mb rather than 1 at 168Mb.

I have benched something similar before between 2 routers with 2 Gbit links between them and using a bonding-rr (round robin) was able to push 2Gb between them, this is OK in a test lab and on dedicated guaranteed links with exactly matching bandwidths but the slightest difference in latency or blip of speed packets will go out of order and problems will begin.

Really wouldn't dream of doing this if it was inbound WAN links over any form of xDSL. Better using policy based routing to force manual division of available bandwidth. Can you elaborate further on the problem you are trying to solve?
 
212.159.5.208 said:
Bind all 4 connections to make 1 faster. The videos online show this
Click to expand...

Could you share links to the videos? I'm intrigued how they show what isn't really possible as others have said.

I've thought about getting another VDSL line in and load balancing or policy based routing between the two, as I used to do with fixed line and mobile WANs, but it really is only of benefit if you're going to have multiple devices saturating some of the connections. Multiple xDSL isn't even likely to provide any sort of redundancy because faults tend to occur somewhere where they'd all be affected and are pretty rare in any case.

One thing I don't know, and wonder if the better qualified experts on here know, is whether such a mulit-xDSL setup would give quicker downloads over newsgroups? If my download client has 50 connections to the newsgroup provider would the load be balanced between the lines or is it considered one connection for the purposes of load balancing?
 
BigT said:
One thing I don't know, and wonder if the better qualified experts on here know, is whether such a mulit-xDSL setup would give quicker downloads over newsgroups? If my download client has 50 connections to the newsgroup provider would the load be balanced between the lines or is it considered one connection for the purposes of load balancing?
Click to expand...

I don't know how newsgroups work but if it's IP based then if the connections are originating from different WAN IP's then in theory yes they would populate faster. If it is login based then likely no benefit as X user would have Y amount of connections live.

The OP has mentioned in another thread about the want to distribute internet locally as a small WISP and I think this thread may be connected. At which point forget 4 connections. Put 1 in and if you need another then scale up, don't overbuy and cause unnecessary cost and complication from the outset.
 
Anything that makes multiple connections can be load balanced effectively - e.g. downloading from newsgroups or supplying internet access to an office full of people. You cannot get a single connection to go quicker than any one of the services you are load balancing between, and there's often a bit of an overhead to doing the load balancing as well.
 
BigT said:
Could you share links to the videos? I'm intrigued how they show what isn't really possible as others have said.

I've thought about getting another VDSL line in and load balancing or policy based routing between the two, as I used to do with fixed line and mobile WANs, but it really is only of benefit if you're going to have multiple devices saturating some of the connections. Multiple xDSL isn't even likely to provide any sort of redundancy because faults tend to occur somewhere where they'd all be affected and are pretty rare in any case.

One thing I don't know, and wonder if the better qualified experts on here know, is whether such a mulit-xDSL setup would give quicker downloads over newsgroups? If my download client has 50 connections to the newsgroup provider would the load be balanced between the lines or is it considered one connection for the purposes of load balancing?
Click to expand...

If the usage is newsgroups, then a VPS and cloud storage will be cheaper and *MUCH* faster, news providers will also ban multiple IP’s on same account unless it’s an (expensive) block account. Basically it’s a bad idea, you need two accounts, two connections, and you still have to have separate clients running on the same host with different ports bound to different interfaces - on the off chance your connection speed isn’t horrible, you then have to contend with multiple repairs hitting IO and many of the indexers will assume you have shared your account as well (expect suspension/bans), you can get round this by using something like hydra bound to a single interface though. Also side note: Although a news providers offer 50 connections, you generally use the minimum you need to saturate your connection speed.
 
I went ahead an ordered one to try.

VDSL connection from Unify USG so in this case a DHCP IP
4G LTE from a Mikrotik SXT LTE also DHCP

Setup both WAN super easy, left it 10 mins to settle

It doubled my speeds on speed test. A file download wasn't, it defaulted to one or the other.
On looking into this more, ports are only 10/100 so speed was limited. It wasn't binding/bonding but just load balancing but only on some things.
Was fun and a bit of a test. Now I need to find a solution to bond them
 
Don't think you'll find a solution to bond them, use a multi-threaded file download manager if you want to take advantage of both.

One thing comes to mind, it should be possible to use VPNs to bond the lines together using something like zeroshell maybe.
 
212.159.5.208 said:
I went ahead an ordered one to try.

VDSL connection from Unify USG so in this case a DHCP IP
4G LTE from a Mikrotik SXT LTE also DHCP

Setup both WAN super easy, left it 10 mins to settle

It doubled my speeds on speed test. A file download wasn't, it defaulted to one or the other.
On looking into this more, ports are only 10/100 so speed was limited. It wasn't binding/bonding but just load balancing but only on some things.
Was fun and a bit of a test. Now I need to find a solution to bond them
Click to expand...

You've clearly read none of the above replies. You CANNOT bond in the scenario you have described.
 
212.159.5.208 said:
So why is it now working when I've just installed a Mikrotik and bonded 4 lines. Working perfectly
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How have you "bonded" 4 lines with a MikroTik? I think the issue is the use of terminology here.
Please explain the config steps you used to do this.

Unless you mean you are doing some kind of PCC which is LOAD BALANCING which is absolutely not the same thing.
 
Is the reason that 4 lines can't go as fast as a single line *4 because the file you download can't be split over multiple lines? Unless of course the file was split into 4 different file segments then it would equate to 4 times faster?

So on a router there would be lack of intelligence to split the file between 4 different lines?
 
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willhub said:
Is the reason that 4 lines can't go as fast as a single line *4 because the file you download can't be split over multiple lines? Unless of course the file was split into 4 different file segments then it would equate to 4 times faster?
So on a router there would be lack of intelligence to split the file between 4 different lines?
Click to expand...

On a 70MPH dual carriageway, is it legal to straddle both lanes doing 140MPH or is the limit still 70MPH? The best analogy I can think of right now.

You just have 2 lanes to put traffic down at 70MPH rather than making 1 lane at 140MPH. Same as if you had 4, you'd have 4 of 70MPH lanes not a 280MPH single lane.

A router can split the packets fine, it's just that the connection speed never increases past a single line's worth although sending 2 cars 1 in each lane is more efficient than sending 2 cars in 1 (hence why it some speedtests will show it as faster than it is, as it kind of is but isn't).


***Bonding, when done on site and within a DC or local exchange is different though and that actually does make it go faster but it's a PITA to maintain and nobody really does it any more.
 
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2 Lorries on a dual carriage way will bring 2 loads twice as quick as 1 lorry and when it arrives the second one setting off.
 
Wherever you want to split things up and use multiple lines you need something on either end that are 'aware' of each other to provide this intelligence. That's what proper bonding does and requires a specialist provider to give you kit/software that talks to their kit/software at the other end. then inbetween use as many connections as you want in theory. That means you can't do it with any old internet service and your own router no matter how fancy. The proprietary 'intelligence' isn't there between say a newsgroup server and your router or a webserver and your router.

Maybe an analogy that may be more familiar (although not exactly the same) is link aggregation on switches. You wouldn't expect to be able to connect two bog standard switches together by more than one cable and get double the throughput between them. However if you have the right kit on either end you can do this with link aggregation. It's providing the 'intelligence' as you describe it. And anything outside of the aggregated link doesn't know anything about how the traffic is routed along multiple lines between those two points. You'd need the same sort of thing to do proper internet connection bonding. It's available but it isn't cheap and can't be done on your own really. On your own you can do load balancing between multiple connections which is probably what is going on here.

Funny thing is that with economies of scale, unless everyone is using the internet heavily at the same time, the OP would probably get the same perceived feeling of improved speed with just 3 load balanced lines as opposed to 4 I suspect, maybe even just 2.
 
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