RT-AC87U - Port Teaming?

[cwickstylz]

So, I just upgraded to the AC87U & noticed that ports 1&2 allow port "teaming"(bonding/trunking I'd assume), but I don't actually see any settings for it?

I've tried both in the Asus firmware & am now running Merlin on it(Merlin builds are awesome & have been using it on my AC66 for a while).

Does anyone know if this is just enabled by default & no configuration is necessary, or if I'm missing something here? I'd love to be able to bond, trunk, team or whatever you'd like to call it for even better performance here...

Thanks!

 

[cwickstylz]

Anybody know anything about the port teaming on the AC87?

 

[Clint_Ostwald]

I am afraid it is kind of a mistery . I had an AC87U for a few days and can tell it is not enabled by default.
I hooked my nas(ds412+) to the router and it gave an error msg with LACP in dsm. If i set it up with just fault tolerance, it shows one lanport down in the Asus gui.

So it does not work (yet).

 

[scavenger]

In spite of the case label, LAN1 and LAN2 are actually on different SOC paths. LAN1 goes through 2 RGMII interfaces and the Quantenna chip, then to the BCM, where LAN2 connects directly to the BCM.

IMHO the case print reflects a functional spec that was not implemented, especially since there is no advertised functionality for teaming, nor any functional code related to it (per RMerlin).

One doesn't normally have such an asymmetry in a teamed pair. I /guess/ it could work, but... I wouldn't think it's a best-practices thing.

 

[sfx2000]

Checking around the interwebs...

The feature is not enabled... yet.

Might be in a future release perhaps.

 

[Ockingshay]

i spoke to Asus technical support today and they reckon that it currently supports split load balancing on ports 1&2.

On my cisco sg200 managed switch i have enabled LAG but not set it to LACP and it just shows it as an active backup.

I cannot seem to get this to work.

LAN1 goes through 2 RGMII interfaces and the Quantenna chip, then to the BCM, where LAN2 connects directly to the BCM.

that's interesting. What would be the best port to use then if this router is simply plugged into a managed switch to provide WAN? or doesn't it make any real world difference?

 

[scavenger]

Check sfx2000 and RMerlin's posts at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18742&page=7 and subsequent pages for a discussion of this, but the general consensus just based on the physical layout is to try to avoid LAN1, especially when you have a significant 5GHz network.

Now, there may be some local link between 5GHz and LAN1 as they both run through the Quantenna chip, but the net filters / QoS and logic presumably would all run over on the BCM. Way out of my league, but my understanding is that this Quantenna part of the driver is closed binary.

Again, all conjecture, and real-world numbers will have to wait for real-world tests. But I'm guessing microsecond latencies are not a big deal for the majority of Best Buy customers. I would NOT want to deploy this router at a 10,000+ user wireless conference though (as I used to do in a past life). When you have hundreds of users per AP, microseconds become minutes.

 

[keenism]

Really wouldn't tell people not to use a port based on the back and forth in that thread...which was based on what could be an old or incomplete block diagram...

edit: pulled out more conjecture, heres a nice pic of the traces for people scan over though.

pic - http://www.tweaktown.com/image.php?...400_dual_band_wireless_router_review_full.jpg

edit: Also worth a mention, I've had around 1300mbps worth going through port1 and the 5GHz radio combined which very possibly could have been higher if it wasn't for the wireless limitations of my phone. I plan to fully stress these parts after I get my server back up (dont raid0 on a server )

 

[L&LD]

What phone gives you three antenna AC bandwidth?

 

[keenism]

Its an S5, its 2x2AC, it was getting 300-350mbps in iperf, the other bandwidth was added from a wired file transfer. Sorry I didn't make that quite clear.

 

[cwickstylz]

http://www.tweaktown.com/image.php?...400_dual_band_wireless_router_review_full.jpg

Quick question, based off the above photo of the board, is anyone able to tell which antennas are for 2.4 & which are the 5Ghz? Just curious...

 

[L&LD]

All of them are 5GHz, and three of them are 2.4GHz too.

 

[scavenger]

Really wouldn't tell people not to use a port based on the back and forth in that thread...which was based on what could be an old or incomplete block diagram...

edit: pulled out more conjecture, heres a nice pic of the traces for people scan over though.

pic - http://www.tweaktown.com/image.php?...400_dual_band_wireless_router_review_full.jpg
[...]

Actually, that image makes it perfectly clear that the block diagram published by Asus is correct. There's LAN1, going through the Realtek chip and on to the Quantenna processor. And there's LAN2-LAN4 (and WAN) all going directly to the BCM. You can even trace back from the indicator lights to each processor block.

Regardless of the overall effect, the traces don't lie-- LAN1 and LAN2 are asymmetrical connections.

 

[keenism]

Right, I can see both RGMII paths quite clearly, as well as each radio or processor...maybe I shouldn't have removed most of my post there, I'm not arguing against the obvious, in fact did I say anything to the contrary that lan1 was on the QTN side behind the realtek? I am a bit confused at the asymmetrical comment... do explain what i'm missing

What I can't see, is where quite a few things are going/coming, there are a lot of interesting vias, this is what i'm interesting in. A good backshot would be fun to look over depending on pcb layers...

anyway whether or not you think something is broken or improperly engineered...I haven't been able to slow it down yet, have you? This is what matters.

edit: BTW, the port teaming function is indeed advertised.. > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320208&cm_re=rt-ac87-_-33-320-208-_-Product

"
Hardware NAT – Removes the bottleneck between the internet and the home network, enabling 2-5 times faster WAN-to-LAN performance vs. traditional software-based NAT.

Link aggregation – Connect a PC with two Ethernet connections to it for combined performance.

Dual WAN support – Convert a LAN port into a WAN and use 2 ISP connections for load-balancing or redundancy.
"

 

[cheezbergher]

Sorry if I'm bumping an older thread here, but I'm still looking for an a way to do LACP bonding on this router.

I just wanted to say too, that the fact that Port 1 is on a different SOC path is irrelevant since both ports in the bond pair need to route through the CPU anyway. The difference in time it takes for both paths wouldn't even be a millisecond.

It's actually more ideal here to use port 1 and 2, since that leaves ports 3 and 4 open for full-speed switching. If you do your bond on ports 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2, ports 3 and 4 still need to route all the way through the CPU, and now port 1 does as well. So essentially, no ports would be able to do full-speed switching, they would all have to pass through the CPU bridge, which would be a performance hit.

At least that's the way Mikrotik routers work, and I know those things inside-out. This Asus router, I don't know as much about, but it seems to have a similar block diagram to some routers I've used.

 

[Embattle]

I'm interested to know if Link aggregation is ever going to actually be activated since it has been listed in the manual for a long time.

 

[scavenger]

Only Asus would know the answer to that question. It's one of several out-of-the-box advertised features that aren't implemented a year into the product lifetime.

 

[Llama]

Any luck as of Dec/15?

 

[VANT]

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1014536/

 

[Llama]

Thanks for the link, Vant. How would one do the same between two AC87 devices, themselves?