hi,
can someone tell me if it's possible to do some kind of "link aggregation" or "load balancing" on wifi with openwrt?
let me describe what i mean by that:
1st archer c7 in dual band AP mode (450mbit 2.4ght + 1300mbit 5ghz), and the 2nd C7 in client mode (2.4ghz connected as client on ap 1, and 5ghz connected as client on ap 1).
now there should be some plugin on both devices that would make link aggregation , so that the total speed on the LAN port of the 2nd C7 is higher.
i need to "transfer" my LAN connection from my parents house to my house, they're ~20m distant. i was thinking to mount both units outside the house in weather sealed boxes, and by doing this i was hoping to get full gigabit speed over wifi.
dedicated mikrotik/ubnt AC devices are ~ 4 x the price, and they wouldn't go over 500mbit because are limited by 2 x 2 AC specification anyway. the idea with 2 x C7 should be faster than that.
thanks
In theory, yes (mwan3) - in practice you really, really, really don't want to do this with links that have so different performance features. Load balancing can cause a lot of grey hairs at the best of times (routing, session control and persistence, cookies, etc.) with very similar links (speed, latency, etc.), but 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz differ so much in regards to the attainable speed, that you won't even notice an improvement by adding the 2.4 GHz link (assuming that the 5 GHz one is working reasonably well).
While I would agree to seek for adding a wired ethernet link between both building (under such ideal circumstances as this), but I would strongly suggest to bury a fibre link instead (at that distance a ready-made cable should do, without a need for splicing in-situ), not because of the performance abilities, but simply to avoid issues with ground potential differences or lightning strikes.
I tried this some time ago... it wasn't easy and it wasn't fast or reliable. I can give you the details if you need them, but my two cents are that you should probably think of something else.
thanks for the (mostly negative) feedback on this idea.
burying the cable is the last (least possible) solution but not completely impossible, i was just eye-ing the least expensive solution. burying the cable(s) will get expensive as we have a paved parking on the way and it can get expensive to remove it, bury a pipe, and restore the parking.
i have a roll of 50m pre-manufactured fiber cable, and i have a roll of 100m UTP cable also. my idea was to actually "hang" the cable between the 2 houses except it can't go directly but must make a triangle-like deviation so 50m of fiber cable is not enough, and hanging utp might not be a good idea because of lightning spikes which might burn network equipment.
i was also eye-ing mikrotik wireless wire but it's 200eur for the set of 2 devices. right now i have a 100mbit link with 2 x sxt.
anyway, thanks for feedback. i will discard the idea. although a bridge link with 3 x 3 MIMO only on 5ghz could be fast. on 1x1 ac i'm getting 300mbit of transfer speed. with 2x2 i was hoping it'd go 500-600, so 3x3 should reach 800-900? 5ghz is very quiet here, and it'd be a ground level link with no obstacles.
You can easily bore under concrete with a cheap water jet attachment and some PVC pipe. I’d go at least 12” (30cm) below the bottom edge of the concrete and go under an expansion joint if possible. I’d leave the PVC in place and send the network wire right through it (after the PVC has had some time to dry out).
Archer C7 can only hit about 300 or maybe 400-500 Mb/s on wireless if doing NAT. If doing just simple switching, you might get 600. If you overclock, you might get higher. But at those distances good luck.
@eduperez
Can you share your results and configuration. Was it stable ? I'm thinking about such solution as sometimes one wifi link is down and not reconnected automatically. So now I'm using travelmate but there is no need to scan to new stronger AP. So I'm thinking to switch to mwan3 with 2 links connected(2,4 GHz and 5GHz) and also experimenting with "watchcat" and ping (quicker feedback):
root@XiaomiMiniAP:~# time /usr/bin/ping -c 3 -i 0.1 -w 1 -W 0.3 192.168.0.7
ping: socket: Address family not supported by protocol
PING 192.168.0.7 (192.168.0.7) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- 192.168.0.7 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 934ms
Command exited with non-zero status 1
real 0m 1.06s
user 0m 0.00s
sys 0m 0.00s
root@XiaomiMiniAP:~# time /usr/bin/ping -c 3 -i 0.1 -w 1 -W 0.3 192.168.0.6
ping: socket: Address family not supported by protocol
PING 192.168.0.6 (192.168.0.6) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.6: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=9.42 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.6: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=7.70 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.6: icmp_seq=3 ttl=63 time=6.56 ms
--- 192.168.0.6 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 201ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.560/7.893/9.420/1.175 ms
real 0m 0.27s
user 0m 0.00s
sys 0m 0.00s
root@XiaomiMiniAP:~#
Sorry, but my setup was unreliable and the performance terrible, so I undid everything and went to search for a different solution; I did not keep any on the configuration files.
