Load balancing/bonding to double network throughput.

[Tamron]

Hi guys,
Bit of a networking newb here, so please bare with me.

I'm connected to a GPON fibre optic router with a 2gbit down 1gbit up service, however because my workstations network controller is a 1gbit device I am limited to 1gbit down and up.

Each of the 4 ethernet ports on the router are capable of the full 1gbit speed, I have tested this using multiple computers running speed test at the same time, and on average see speeds of around 890 meg down / 540 meg up on both computers during the speed test, so it is clear that If i could run two gigabit lines to the router I could use the full speed.

So my question is simply, what is the best / cheapest approach to bonding/bridging two 1gbit ethernet cables from the GPON router to my PC and be able to use the full bandwidth available for both upload and download?

It seems pretty damn hard to find any information on it, though I read a report that a provider in the US that is soon rolling out 2gbit achieved it using a switch?

If anyone has any suggestions of what components/switch/OS/etc is needed for this I'd appreciate it.

 

[Pandasaurus]

I'm sure somebody else with more knowledge will chime in shortly, but generally, channel bonding/link aggregation/teaming/<insert other terms here> will require a switch capable of it (I believe most low-end managed switches these days are capable of some form of it. Try Cisco Small Business, TP-Link, etc). However, it typically will only give you increased bandwidth to multiple destinations, not a single destination (IE: You may be able to get two downloads from different sources at 1Gb/s, but not one download at 2Gb/s). Of course, this depends on the exact method and devices used. You will also need either an OS capable of link aggregation, or a higher-end NIC with drivers that handle that (for example, Broadcom NetExtreme). Side note, I find it unlikely that your router can truly handle 2+ Gb/s WAN>LAN throughput.

 

[Tamron]

Decided to say what the hell, ordered a dual port intel nic (EXPI9402PT) that supports teaming on the driver level, and a TL-SG3210 managed switch that supports LACP.
Will connect the GPON router to the switch via two cat6, then switch to dual port nic via cat6 and see what happens.

 

[XavierMace]

For the record, good luck finding a download source that it will make any difference.

 

[Gryz]

If you use bittorrent, you will use many small tcp-connections to different peers at the same time. Many small make one big. You should be able to fill your 2Gbps link if you use the right torrent (one with many seeds). A software distribution (some full Linux distro) might do the trick.

Tamron, I was just thinking about your problem (before you posted your 2nd post). Generic load-balancing solutions would heavily depend on what you can do with the OS on your PC. E.g if you can configure a loopback interface on your PC, and force software to use that address as their source ip-address. Also the load-balancing implementation on the router (per packet, per destination or per flow load-balancing).

A bonding solution would be better, but would heavily depend on the bonding features in both your router and your PC's OS. Ordering new hardware where you know both sides support LACP is probably the smartest (and least time-consuming) way. Good luck. Let us know if it worked, I'm curious.

 

[XavierMace]

If you use bittorrent, you will use many small tcp-connections to different peers at the same time. Many small make one big. You should be able to fill your 2Gbps link if you use the right torrent (one with many seeds). A software distribution (some full Linux distro) might do the trick.

Yeah, good luck with that.

 

[Pandasaurus]

I probably should have mentioned in my previous post that it's unlikely that the router supports LACP, so you'll still only get 1Gb/s beyond the switch anyways... You may want to look into getting DD-WRT or something like that working on it.

 

[Gryz]

Yeah, good luck with that.

And why would that be a problem ?
A fully filled 1 Gbps-link should allow a throughput over 100MB/sec. Up to 120MB/sec. Let's assume it'll take a minute to find enough seeds to get up to full speed. That would require 60sec *120MB = 7.2GB of data. Speed will not be 120MB instantly. So let's assume linear increase (0MB/sec at the start, 60MB/sec after 30 sec, 120MB/sec after 60 sec). That means you need only 3.6 GB+ of data to reach full speed. Yeah, you are right, Linux distros might not be big enough.

On the other hand, the OP might not have ordered a 2Gbps link, just to download stuff from the Internet. He might want to download data from servers at work, or at companies or institutes that he works with.

Example: a friend of mine writes software that does topology/geography stuff. He uses data from the Open Street Map project. The full data-set is 40GB compressed. He regularly downloads the full set. I guess he would also try to make full use of his 2Gbps if he had that. (Downloading 40GB at 2Gbps takes 6 minutes. Download at 1Gbps takes 12 minutes. At 200Mbps (cable) it would take my friend still only an hour.

Or you could install World of Warcraft. WoW uses torrent-technology to download the game from other players, in stead of from Blizzard itself. I think WoW is 30-40GB these days too.

Some games seem to have very fast download speeds from the game studio too. GTAV and TW3 were filling up my (slow) link immediately. I bet they have a lot of capacity, so they can deal with the short increase in bandwidth need when they release a patch. And what about Steam ? Valve has a *huge* amount of bandwidth to the Internet. In the order of multiple Terbits/sec. And I bet they don't care if one single customers tries to download at 2Gbps.

There must be lots of ways to use the full 2Gbps, if you do a little creative thinking.

Better make sure you have a lot of large SSDs. Otherwise you'll be benchmarking the speed of HDDs, in stead of the speed of your network.

 

[Tamron]

For the record, good luck finding a download source that it will make any difference.

I work in product design and regularly transfer a few gb a day, the servers at work are able to handle 10gbit, when transfering files to the servers at work i regularly top 85-90mb/s and would quite like the benefit of being able to transfer more.

Beyond that, I generally get excellent speeds from Microsofts Japanese servers and Steams japan based content servers, as per this:

Thanks for the recommendations and suggestions guys, will let you know how it goes once the parts i have ordered arrive! and no worries on the transfer rate, my workstations using only SSD

 

[XavierMace]

And why would that be a problem ?
On the other hand, the OP might not have ordered a 2Gbps link, just to download stuff from the Internet. He might want to download data from servers at work, or at companies or institutes that we works with.

Example: a friend of mine writes software that does topology/geography stuff. He uses data from the Open Street Map project. The full data-set is 40GB compressed. He regularly downloads the full set. I guess he would also try to make full use of his 2Gbps if he had that. (Downloading 40GB at 2Gbps takes 6 minutes. Download at 1Gbps takes 12 minutes. At 200Mbps (cable) it would take my friend still only an hour.

Or you could install World of Warcraft. WoW uses torrent-technology to download the game from other players, in stead of from Blizzard itself. I think WoW is 30-40GB these days too.

Some games seem to have very fast download speeds from the game studio too. GTAV and TW3 were filling up my (slow) link immediately. I bet they have a lot of capacity, so they can deal with the short increase in bandwidth need when they release a patch. And what about Steam ? Valve has a *huge* amount of bandwidth to the Internet. In the order of multiple Terbits/sec. And I bet they don't care if one single customers tries to download at 2Gbps.

There must be lots of ways to use the full 2Gbps, if you do a little creative thinking.

Better make sure you have a lot of large SSDs. Otherwise you'll be benchmarking the speed of HDDs, in stead of the speed of your network.

Wow. That's just a massive amount of assumptions there. I've got a relatively piddly 150/75mbps connection right now. It's pretty rare that I can find a source that will saturate it. That includes Torrents, MMO's, and Steam. And believe me, it's not for lack of trying. I've hit 1.5TB of downloads in a month before.

I work in product design and regularly transfer a few gb a day, the servers at work are able to handle 10gbit, when transfering files to the servers at work i regularly top 85-90mb/s and would quite like the benefit of being able to transfer more.

Beyond that, I generally get excellent speeds from Microsofts Japanese servers and Steams japan based content servers, as per this:

Thanks for the recommendations and suggestions guys, will let you know how it goes once the parts i have ordered arrive! and no worries on the transfer rate, my workstations using only SSD

The point I was making was just because your side is capable of handing 2Gbps, doesn't mean the other side can and/or will allow you to use that. Obviously Japan's infrastructure is substantially better than the US's (I came when I saw your Steam screenshot) but even if everything on your side of your router is > 1Gbps and everything on your employers side of their router is > 1Gbps doesn't mean you'll get 1Gbps on transfers. If that's normal in Japan, I'm more than a little jealous.

 

[azazel1024]

I'm sure somebody else with more knowledge will chime in shortly, but generally, channel bonding/link aggregation/teaming/<insert other terms here> will require a switch capable of it (I believe most low-end managed switches these days are capable of some form of it. Try Cisco Small Business, TP-Link, etc). However, it typically will only give you increased bandwidth to multiple destinations, not a single destination (IE: You may be able to get two downloads from different sources at 1Gb/s, but not one download at 2Gb/s). Of course, this depends on the exact method and devices used. You will also need either an OS capable of link aggregation, or a higher-end NIC with drivers that handle that (for example, Broadcom NetExtreme). Side note, I find it unlikely that your router can truly handle 2+ Gb/s WAN>LAN throughput.

Yeah, without some very specialized support, the best you can hope for is 1Gbps per source. So you could hit up two 1Gbps downloads, but not a single 2Gbps download.

Internally you can do better than that with Windows 8.1 and SMB multichannel, where you could get 2Gbps for a single file transfer is the other end supports it.

Problem is, SMB multichannel breaks with LACP (on the host and destination computers, in between, on any switch to switch hops, you need LACP/LAG).