LACP to wireless router

[jackbean]

I am upgrading my network to use a pfsense firewall and a managed switch that supports 802.3ad (link agg). Ill probably pickup a bottle neck having only 1 gigabit connection to the wireless router because that's where a majority of traffic will be coming from and all the other network appliances will reside on the managed switch. Its also important to note i have a server that gets lots of data sent to it from multiple clients simultaneously. I need to use link aggregation or LACP to the wireless router from the switch. I believe my wndr3700 supports it with DDwrt installed on it since there is a bonding option but that may only be for lan connections to the wireless router and not wan connections.

 

[abailey]

I am upgrading my network to use a pfsense firewall and a managed switch that supports 802.3ad (link agg). Ill probably pickup a bottle neck having only 1 gigabit connection to the wireless router because that's where a majority of traffic will be coming from and all the other network appliances will reside on the managed switch. Its also important to note i have a server that gets lots of data sent to it from multiple clients simultaneously. I need to use link aggregation or LACP to the wireless router from the switch. I believe my wndr3700 supports it with DDwrt installed on it since there is a bonding option but that may only be for lan connections to the wireless router and not wan connections.

I am trying to picture where you might have a bottle neck. Your connection between your wireless router and your switch will not be the bottle neck as your wireless is slower than a Gigabit full duplex connection to the switch. Do you have other devices wired into your wireless router?

 

[jackbean]

I am trying to picture where you might have a bottle neck. Your connection between your wireless router and your switch will not be the bottle neck as your wireless is slower than a Gigabit full duplex connection to the switch. Do you have other devices wired into your wireless router?

I have a 16 port switch so everything is plugged into that instead of the router. The only things connected to the router are wireless devices. Wont multiple devices using the wireless cause it to saturate a gigabit connection if the devices are using lots of bandwidth.

 

[System Error Message]

Even with wireless AC the answer is still no it will not saturate a gigabit link. This is because the practical data rates are much lower than theoratical.

gigabit ethernet is 1Gb/s per direction which means it can transmit up to 2Gb/s in total whereas wireless bandwidth stated is for both rx and tx. The most i've ever got out of wireless AC is above 80% and that is through very heavy stress testing and benchmark. When doing anything else like file transfers the bandwidth used is much much lower.

 

[jackbean]

Even with wireless AC the answer is still no it will not saturate a gigabit link. This is because the practical data rates are much lower than theoratical.

gigabit ethernet is 1Gb/s per direction which means it can transmit up to 2Gb/s in total whereas wireless bandwidth stated is for both rx and tx. The most i've ever got out of wireless AC is above 80% and that is through very heavy stress testing and benchmark. When doing anything else like file transfers the bandwidth used is much much lower.

Damn, well i guess ill just use a single gigabit link to the router. It would have been cool to be have been able to aggregate this link with an additional cable but i guess its not possible and not really necessary with my current hardware. Although i think my router can do link aggregation to lan clients but im not sure.

 

[System Error Message]

If your router is linux based like ASUS or running 3rd party firmware you can do LACP on LAN but you will need to modify some config files via command line. I am not sure if it will do it via switch chip or CPU.

 

[azazel1024]

Damn, well i guess ill just use a single gigabit link to the router. It would have been cool to be have been able to aggregate this link with an additional cable but i guess its not possible and not really necessary with my current hardware. Although i think my router can do link aggregation to lan clients but im not sure.

Through DD-WRT I believe it can, but there is zero point. At best you are probably looking at a combined 400-450Mbps between both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands on the WNDR3700 for VERY good connections. That isn't even enough to saturate half of a half-duplex gigabit link, let alone an entire full duplex link.

Once you start getting in to AC1900 routers with AC1900 clients, then you might run in to a fully saturated half-duplex link (if the clients are all receiving or all sending). I have seen some AC1750 clients on 5GHz hit up around mid 80MB/sec...that plus a 2.4GHz client at 40MB/sec or so would be more than the capacity of a 1GbE link if they were both sending or receiving at the same time. But maybe just barely.

Where you might run in to it more is if you have clients wired in to the router or if you have something like an AC2350+ router with AC2350+ clients to go with, or maybe once MU:MIMO hits in a substantial way, with something >AC2350/2400 router (because MU:MIMO you lose one of the radio links in being able to provide it, so effectively an AC2350, 1.7Gbps 5GHz and 600Mbps 2.4GHz actually can only provide 1.3Gbps 5GHz and 400Mbps 2.4GHz spread between multiple clients, though it can hit the 1.7Gbps or 600Mbps for a single client if the client has enough spatial streams).

Keep in mind with Wifi in an IDEAL setup, you can get about 75% of the advertised speed on an AWESOME connection due to error correction and 802.11__ overhead. A typical is lower.

As an example, my Archer C8 I have the best 2.4GHz connection I have ever seen, 28.5MB/sec, or 228Mbps out of 300Mbps (just a 2:2 client) 76% of the link rate. On 5GHz though (11ac, so 867Mbps link rate for the same 2:2 client) I can only manage 62MB/sec absolute max and that is much dicier to get (typical even same room is more in the 55-57MB/sec range, but sometimes I can hit 62MB/sec steady state transfers). That is 496Mbps out of a possible 867Mbps, or only 57% of the link rate.

I think as 802.11ac matures, as well as the silicon, drivers, and all other components I think we'll see utilization bump up. Afterall, with 802.11n it has slowly increased over the years. Just looking at a few year old Intel 2230 combined with a Netgear WNDR3500l, which was pretty fast when it was brand new compared to other N300 routers (no, it wasn't top of the food chain ever, but it was good at the time), I could max at best 21MB/sec and that was with a serious tailwind. 168Mbps or 56% of link rate. My TP-Link WDR3600 is a couple of years newer (2? 3?), better overall everything as near as I can tell and just that change improved things to around 24MB/sec, or 192Mbps, or 64%. Swapping the 2230 in my laptop out for an Intel 7260ac saw my 2.4GHz and 5Ghz speeds improve to about 25MB/sec on 2.4GHz and 25.5MB/sec on 5GHz using the same WDR3600, now 200 and 204Mbps respectively and 66.6% and 68% respectively.

Then my Archer C8 which ups the game even more, pushing speeds to 28.5MB/sec, or 228Mbps and 76%. It can't really get any better without moving off standard 802.11n as regular forward error correction takes almost exactly 24% of the overall bandwidth. You can do low density parity checking, but that is NOT an 802.11n standard/requirement.

Looking at the performance of most 802.11ac routers, I'd bet as the years progress, we'll see them taking better and better advantage of what there is now. I'd almost bet that in 3-4 years we'll see routers being able to hit more like 60+% or even in to the 70% range for realizable link rate utilization.

Anyway, I digress. Long rambling diatribe.

No reason to use LAG/LACP on your router for any reason, unfortunately.

 

[jackbean]

Through DD-WRT I believe it can, but there is zero point. At best you are probably looking at a combined 400-450Mbps between both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands on the WNDR3700 for VERY good connections. That isn't even enough to saturate half of a half-duplex gigabit link, let alone an entire full duplex link.

Once you start getting in to AC1900 routers with AC1900 clients, then you might run in to a fully saturated half-duplex link (if the clients are all receiving or all sending). I have seen some AC1750 clients on 5GHz hit up around mid 80MB/sec...that plus a 2.4GHz client at 40MB/sec or so would be more than the capacity of a 1GbE link if they were both sending or receiving at the same time. But maybe just barely.

Where you might run in to it more is if you have clients wired in to the router or if you have something like an AC2350+ router with AC2350+ clients to go with, or maybe once MU:MIMO hits in a substantial way, with something >AC2350/2400 router (because MU:MIMO you lose one of the radio links in being able to provide it, so effectively an AC2350, 1.7Gbps 5GHz and 600Mbps 2.4GHz actually can only provide 1.3Gbps 5GHz and 400Mbps 2.4GHz spread between multiple clients, though it can hit the 1.7Gbps or 600Mbps for a single client if the client has enough spatial streams).

Keep in mind with Wifi in an IDEAL setup, you can get about 75% of the advertised speed on an AWESOME connection due to error correction and 802.11__ overhead. A typical is lower.

As an example, my Archer C8 I have the best 2.4GHz connection I have ever seen, 28.5MB/sec, or 228Mbps out of 300Mbps (just a 2:2 client) 76% of the link rate. On 5GHz though (11ac, so 867Mbps link rate for the same 2:2 client) I can only manage 62MB/sec absolute max and that is much dicier to get (typical even same room is more in the 55-57MB/sec range, but sometimes I can hit 62MB/sec steady state transfers). That is 496Mbps out of a possible 867Mbps, or only 57% of the link rate.

I think as 802.11ac matures, as well as the silicon, drivers, and all other components I think we'll see utilization bump up. Afterall, with 802.11n it has slowly increased over the years. Just looking at a few year old Intel 2230 combined with a Netgear WNDR3500l, which was pretty fast when it was brand new compared to other N300 routers (no, it wasn't top of the food chain ever, but it was good at the time), I could max at best 21MB/sec and that was with a serious tailwind. 168Mbps or 56% of link rate. My TP-Link WDR3600 is a couple of years newer (2? 3?), better overall everything as near as I can tell and just that change improved things to around 24MB/sec, or 192Mbps, or 64%. Swapping the 2230 in my laptop out for an Intel 7260ac saw my 2.4GHz and 5Ghz speeds improve to about 25MB/sec on 2.4GHz and 25.5MB/sec on 5GHz using the same WDR3600, now 200 and 204Mbps respectively and 66.6% and 68% respectively.

Then my Archer C8 which ups the game even more, pushing speeds to 28.5MB/sec, or 228Mbps and 76%. It can't really get any better without moving off standard 802.11n as regular forward error correction takes almost exactly 24% of the overall bandwidth. You can do low density parity checking, but that is NOT an 802.11n standard/requirement.

Looking at the performance of most 802.11ac routers, I'd bet as the years progress, we'll see them taking better and better advantage of what there is now. I'd almost bet that in 3-4 years we'll see routers being able to hit more like 60+% or even in to the 70% range for realizable link rate utilization.

Anyway, I digress. Long rambling diatribe.

No reason to use LAG/LACP on your router for any reason, unfortunately.

Soon there may be a reason, D-link just announced a model called the AC3200 which is cable of wireless speeds above a gigabit with an even faster model being released later this year.
Btw not to change the subject but i need a good managed switch, i was looking at the cisco sg300 series but i have found the dell powerconnect 5224 to be much cheaper and i believe it to have the same features. Could you recommend a good managed switch, needs at least 16 port gigabit.
Edit: Apparentley dell has multiple different series of these powerconnect. The powerconnect 5324 is a little more exspensive but i guess its newer? not sure.

 

[azazel1024]

Because I use it, I'd suggest the TP-Link SG2216. A good semi-managed L2 switch. Very good bang for the buck with it. Tons of features, works well, pretty low powered and has been rock solid for me over the past year of use with one switching issue induced by a power surge (which a factory firmware reset fixed, the surge was big enough it fried the optical network terminal for my Verizon FIOS service which was not on any kind of surge protection, my other stuff was and survived fine other than the brief glitch with the switch).

First off, I dislike DLinks wireless products (their wired products are meh, but I actively dislike their wireless products). For a lot of their "capability", I wouldn't read too much in to it. Look at the current AC3200 X-stream products which have a 2.4GHz and two 5GHz radios, their total 5GHz throughput between both radios is significantly less than most good AC1750/AC1900 routers are with a SINGLE 5GHz radio. Not sure where the bottle neck is with the X-Stream platform, but it is pretty signficant.

My concern will only be if/when 160MHz 802.11ac products actually reach the market. As it stands, other than very niche bridging applications you aren't really going to see any home applications where you'll get 1Gbps or more of real utilizable wireless throughput. Even with proposed MU:MIMO, because you "lose" one spatial stream to make it work, the best (assuming no 4:4 bridging) in theory 5GHz performance is going to be roughly 1GBps with an "AC2350/2400) 4:4 router and 2.4GHz will be 250/370Mbps (depending on if it is a 3:3 or 4:4 2.4GHz radio), yes that adds up to over 1Gbps, but that is if both radios are getting hammered and IF you are getting the best ideal throughput you possibly can.

As it stands with current 11ac devices, you are looking at maybe 50-60% yield on 5GHz and I suspect the latest and greatest coming up won't really improve that. This is also assuming that MU:MIMO works flawlessly and there is NO loss of yield (other than losing a spatial stream) either through wireless inefficiencies or through radio/SoC overhead in processing it all.

In a business class router which might well be dealing with lots of devices over both bands, LACP is really going to be needed pronto, especially with MU:MIMO, in the home...it would take one heck of a use case to actually push the wireless through put in to saturating a 1Gbps wired link (especially as some of those wireless devices might be pushing data, not just pulling it...and GbE is full duplex, where as wireless is half duplex...)

160MHz, especially with MU:MIMO is absolutely going to require LACP, or faster ethernet, otherwise the wire will be limiting. However, lots of talk about 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps ethernet being introduced as a standard by IEEE and also having shipping products this year too (they are basing it on a couple of guys proprietary 2.5/5Gbps MACs, just hashing out the details to standardize so everyone can build gear for it). Basically they want to be able to continue using Cat5e up to 100 meters with this "new" 2.5/5Gbps standard, as well as lower power consumption than 10Gbps ethernet requires. In large part because of this upcoming limitation that faster wireless routers and access points are going to result in.

So in a lot of ways, I would not expect LACP to EVER come to consumer routers/APs, it is a lot more likely that 2.5/5GbE will be introduced before 1GbE LACP is needed and that high end routers and APs will then standardize on 2.5/5GbE, then some day probably more toward 10GbE as that becomes cheap enough and low enough power.

802.11ax is really going to kill things. It changes from OFDM which 802.11a, g, n and ac all are to OFDA (or OFDMA). OFDM = Orthagonal Frequency Devision Multiplexing, OFDMA is Orthagonal Frequency Division Multiple Access.

It assigns up subsets within the subcarrier frequencies to make bigger pipes as well as allow multiple devices to communicate at once without interfering with each other. 802.11ax is TRUE WLAN as a switched network. I haven't been able to find the frequency width used, but very early "802.11ax" lab testing has yielded 10.53Gbps of "data speed" (I assume this is the signaling speed they've generated, not the actual throughput, which I'd assume is more like 4-7Gbps actual) in lab testing utilizing the 5GHz spectrum space (I assuming they were using something in the 50-160MHz range for actual width, though with the whole Multiple Access thing going on, channel overlap would not be a big deal).

If you are wondering, 802.11ax is tentatively slated for 2018 approval. I would not expect shipping devices, even based on draft specifications before this. Maybe there will be, but with the nature of how they are likely to need to work out OFDMA, something that doesn't rigidly adhere to the spec's is likely to cause all KINDS of problems with everyone else's gear.

 

[sinshiva]

802.11ax is really going to kill things. It changes from OFDM which 802.11a, g, n and ac all are to OFDA (or OFDMA). OFDM = Orthagonal Frequency Devision Multiplexing, OFDMA is Orthagonal Frequency Division Multiple Access.

It assigns up subsets within the subcarrier frequencies to make bigger pipes as well as allow multiple devices to communicate at once without interfering with each other. 802.11ax is TRUE WLAN as a switched network. I haven't been able to find the frequency width used, but very early "802.11ax" lab testing has yielded 10.53Gbps of "data speed" (I assume this is the signaling speed they've generated, not the actual throughput, which I'd assume is more like 4-7Gbps actual) in lab testing utilizing the 5GHz spectrum space (I assuming they were using something in the 50-160MHz range for actual width, though with the whole Multiple Access thing going on, channel overlap would not be a big deal).

freakin sweet.