Have multiple internet connections? Combine them!

[VirtualLarry]

With Shibby Tomato 138-MultiWAN, and a supported router.

I'm using an Asus AC68R, which is the same hardware as AC68U, flashed with Tomato.

You can also use a Tenda AC15 ($53 from Newegg on ebay, new), which is also mostly the same hardware.

You need to login to the router, go to "Advanced", "VLAN", and you will see the default settings, Port 1-4 are checked, for LAN, and "WAN" port is mapped to "WAN".

You need to click on the LAN line, uncheck port 4, then click on OK, and then click on the new line, add VLAN 3, VID 3, type "WAN2", click Add. Then click the WAN2 line, and check off Port 4, click OK. Then scroll down and click SAVE.

If everything is OK, in two minutes the router will reboot up again, and the farthest-away LAN port from the WAN port, will be WAN2.

Then login to the router again, click on Basic, Network, and in the top drop-box, select "WAN: 2". Then you can configure two WANs in the area below. When done, scroll down and hit SAVE.

Then plug in your second WAN into the WAN2 port, the furthest-away port from the normal WAN port.

Note that the LAN/WAN graphical blinking icons aren't correct on the "Overview" screen. Don't worry about that.

I found that with two WANs connected, going to fast.com 's speedtest, I sometimes got 70Mbit/sec down, with 60+10Mbit/sec down connections. But this is rare.

Don't forget to adjust the round-robin weighting for each WAN port, if they aren't equal speeds.

 

[JackMDS]

What exactly you mean by Combining Internet Connections (I mean in price technical terms rather than Poetry).

http://www.ezlan.net/loadbalance.html

 

[master_shake_]

aggregate!

got an old pc?

pfsense!

 

[mv2devnull]

What exactly you mean by Combining Internet Connections (I mean in price technical terms rather than Poetry).

This.

Semi-related:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Adv-Routing-HOWTO/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html
http://rhelblog.redhat.com/2014/06/23/team-driver/


@Larry: You did describe how to use the GUI of Tomato. That is good. It is interesting to learn that a GUI (of cheap consumer gadget) can actually offer possibility to configure the underlying software.

However, only the "round-robin weighting" hints about what the Tomato does under the hood. Understanding of what actually happens is more important than clicking buttons.

 

[JackMDS]

@mv2devnull. If you notice your first link above is dealing with Split Access and Load Balance

Unfortunately the common use of the Word combining Internet over users forums almost always means that users would like to combine two Internet sources to intensify one unique Download. I.e., if my Win10 3GB ISO take to download 30 minutes would the one specific download takes less time if I combine two Internet connections.

The correct term for getting such Downloading capacity it is pure "Bonding", Bonding works if the ISP that provides the connections actually provides coordinated Bonding service. Consumer/SOHO Routers can Not Bond none Bonded ISP connections.

You can ""Bond"" water pipes to one coherent stream. Ethernet is not a water like Pure Flow, it is based on addressing going back and forth. If a TCP session starts on one ISP it must continue on that ISP with that same addressing. Hosts ends of the conversation can't understand when some of the packets have one address, and other packets have a different address.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, pretty sure that this is only round-robin load balancing, and / or failover, and not any type of bonding / link-aggregation, which requires ISP support, as Jack so helpfully mentioned.

But some sites like fast.com, apparently use multiple streams, so I can "cheat" the speedtest sites, and get 70Mbit/sec, from a 60+10 connection.