Anyone using link aggregation?

[grueber]

I have a ROG 5300. I’m using link aggregation with a built in Ethernet port and an add on Ethernet card. When it works it works great. Problem is I’m having intermittent loss on internet access of that PC (intranet is always up). Wondering if it’s an issue with using two different Intel NICs or is link aggregation just not stable with the router? The PC is running Win 10.

Thinking about buying a motherboard with dual NICs. I’ve looked at some dual NIC addon cards but the only ones I’ve found seem to be old hardware that do not support 802.3ad link aggregation in Win 10.

 

[Darf Nader]

As long as you’re using layer 2 LACP it should work as long as the rest of the ethernet settings are the same (frame size, rate, etc...). When I briefly had the same router as you I was able to bond two NICs on MacOS where I used the on-board NIC and a USB 3 NIC. It actually worked better than my R-TYPE-AC87U using ASUS or Merlin’s WRT. Drivers should still be the same though, but I don’t know how much different the ROGs are hardware-wise. Considering that my setup had a NIC on PCI and serial busses, your setup is more homogenous than mine. I would review your settings and make sure you’re using a support link aggregation protocol commonly support by all the parts.

Do you have any other way to test parts of the setup, such as another computer that you can bond NICs or a LACP capable switch?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[grueber]

Unfortunately no. All my PCs only have one NIC and the 5300 is the only router/switch with LACP functionality.

I looked through the Intel team tab but I don't see any additional settings for 802.3ad beyond picking it.

I'll play around with it and see if the stability improves.

 

[LimJK]

I have a ROG 5300.
Wondering if it’s an issue with using two different Intel NICs or is link aggregation just not stable with the router?.

Grueber,
Just an input on stability of Link Aggregation on my RT-AC5300 with my Synology NAS with 802.3ad support. I have been using it for a very long time, starting with Merlin FW and more recently on Stock FW in AiMesh setup.

 

[drabisan]

@grueber, my experience is nearly identical with @LimJK.
Super stable for >1 year with a Synology box.

I would question your need to do 802.3ad. Do you have so much bandwidth requirements from that PC?
I never tried to do 802.3ad between 2 different network adapters. It may work if all the processing of the packets is moved into software. But if one card offloads some of the processing, or if one card has DMA and one doesn't...I don't think that will work well.

So the questions to you are: do you really need it? If yes, can you get 2 identical adapters? Or an adapter that supports 802.3ad by itself?

 

[grueber]

I performed a hard reset (hold reset button down for 30 sec) of my 5300. Other devices on my network were having intermittent loss of internet connectivity on WiFi and ethernet. After the reset everything has worked fine including the link aggregation. Took a hour setting everything up the way I like it.

I have multiple security cams that stream up to 4k resolution and there is a constant 10-13 MB/sec stream going to my PC. That should be easily handled by a single gig ethernet connection but transfer speeds to the PC maxed out at 15 MB/sec. Now I'm getting 80 MB/sec to the PC over my MOCA adapters.

 

[LimJK]

I performed a hard reset (hold reset button down for 30 sec) of my 5300. Other devices on my network were having intermittent loss of internet connectivity on WiFi and ethernet. After the reset everything has worked fine including the link aggregation. Took a hour setting everything up the way I like it.

grueber,
Glad you resolve your issue
See if this post might be useful when you need to do factory reset and want a quick way to restore some specific NVRAM settings
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...on-3-0-0-4-384-20648.46038/page-2#post-399998

 

[DummyPLUG]

Unfortunately no. All my PCs only have one NIC and the 5300 is the only router/switch with LACP functionality.

I looked through the Intel team tab but I don't see any additional settings for 802.3ad beyond picking it.

I'll play around with it and see if the stability improves.

As I remember Intel LACP support for Win10 was removed long time ago, dunno if they had add it back. I also remember MS had totally remove LACP support in win10 client, so you need 3rd party software such as Intel teaming to do that. I didn't use win10 on any wired PC
I am using I350-T4 on win 7/8.1

 

[grueber]

grueber,
Glad you resolve your issue
See if this post might be useful when you need to do factory reset and want a quick way to restore some specific NVRAM settings
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...on-3-0-0-4-384-20648.46038/page-2#post-399998

Is that different from saving and restoring the settings under the Administration tab?

 

[LimJK]

Is that different from saving and restoring the settings under the Administration tab?

Grueber,

• The restoration under the Administration tab, restores everything;
  • including (both good & bad NVRAM settings),
  • also new Firmware may introduce new or changes to NVRAM settings.
• For me I like to do Factory Reset for each new Firmware, so that I know that I am starting with clean default settings. However, some of the NVRAM settings can be quite tedious to do manually, so being lazy, the link describes the way I selectively save and restore some of these settings. I have 40+ devices in my DHCP list with customised icons, doing by hand is going to take me a while and I am sure there will be some finger errors.