Best way to bond connections together?

[Sonny C]

Hey there, router experts! Got a neat one for ya.

(Posted this in the router forum because I am looking for the best router to act as an access point for multiple connections)

I am moving to a rural area and likely will have to bond several connections together, 4G LTE and Starlink. Hopefully more, but it is dependent on what is available. Regardless, my question is:

Is it better to use a load balancing router or rather use OpenMPTCP to bond several connections together? I've heard that using a load balancing router doesn't combine each connection into one, making a single faster speed, but instead routes traffic to each "channel" dependent on usage. I will be using this new setup for live streaming, along with my family on their daily uses (Netflix, phones, laptops, etc.) so I cannot afford any dropouts.

I've never used Linux, so I am naturally hesitant to attempt to use OpenMPTCP - while I would rather combine as many different internet sources into one, I am wondering if there are other ways to bond internet connections, or if there's any where I can find anymore info on this? Youtube and Google seem to be scarce on this info, or rather I'm not typing in the right things. Rookie here and would appreciate ANY information and help on this.

I once posted here searching for the best VPN router for my needs and still use and love my Asus - really love the people in here and I know this was the place to go! Much love.

 

[Sonny C]

I've also read that the Raspberry Pi is another way to go - what are your thoughts experts?

 

[L&LD]

Afaik, consumers can't bond connections together. Only ISPs can offer that (if they offer that).

To do load-balancing dependably, look for Cisco business-level equipment (RV series).

 

[sfx2000]

Afaik, consumers can't bond connections together. Only ISPs can offer that (if they offer that).

To do load-balancing dependably, look for Cisco business-level equipment (RV series).

[OpenWrt Wiki] mwan3 (Multi WAN load balancing/failover)

openwrt.org

The mwan3 package provides the following functionality and capabilities:

• Outbound WAN traffic load balancing or fail-over with multiple WAN interfaces based on a numeric weight assignment
• Monitors each WAN connection using repeated tests and can automatically route outbound traffic to another WAN interface if the first WAN interface loses connectivity
• Creating outbound traffic rules to customize which outbound connections should use which WAN interface (policy based routing). This can be customised based on source IP, destination IP, source port(s), destination port(s), type of IP protocol etc
• Physical and/or logical WAN interfaces are supported
• The firewall mask (default 0x3F00) which is used to mark outgoing traffic can be configured in the /etc/config/mwan3 globals section. This is useful if you also use other packages (nodogsplash) which use the firewall masking feature. This value is also used to set how many interfaces are supported.

 

[sfx2000]

I've never used Linux, so I am naturally hesitant to attempt to use OpenMPTCP

Note that this only works with TCP connections, not UDP - which will be problematic for Gaming, Streaming, etc...

Having the VPS in the middle can lead to latency issues, as you may be aware of.