Router with many ports for many WAN (about 10)!

Hi ,
I want to setup a very fast connection and I want to use multiple WANs (maybe 10 but it can be higher or lower no rules :wink: ) and I want it to be cheap (!!!) . I want only one computer getting all that traffic so I only need one LAN . And I don't need Wifi at all.
Each WAN throughput is about 40 Mbps.
There are many routers out there I search a lot and I choose some and I found that OpenWrt don't support them very well .
I am very noob in this field so I wanted to ask experts about the hardware and what place better than OpenWrt forum .
If I should specify more factors please let me know And I'll be glad to talk about them
Thanks in advance !

OpenWRT mwan3 only supports IP-Based load balancing, so if you want to have session-based load balancing, I would suggest to go with other router, such as Mikrotik RB3011UiAS-RM with has 10 gigabit port. You can still install OpenWRT if you want. Else, you have to build an x86 PC, with at least 2 x 4 ports NIC which not cheap at all.

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Does it support multi WAN ? (I've never done multi WAN before kind of nervous :sweat_smile: ) @vanst

Just my two cents:

  • Using OpenWrt, ports (on most routers) can be reconfigured. A router with one WAN port and four LAN ports can be reconfigured as four WAN ports and a single LAN port.

  • Using an external managed switch, you could use a router with a single ethernet port, and configure each port on the switch as an independent interface.

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Is it possible to use switch ports for WAN purposes ? (one router + one switch = many WAN ???) @eduperez

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RouterOS supports both IP-Based and Session-Based load balancing, so you should be good to go. What is the throughput for each of your WAN connection?

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About 40 Mbps each @vanst

Have you considered MPTCP?

Didn't heared of it ! @jayanta525

If you're considering a single user utilizing all the WAN aggregated bandwidth, mwan3 can't help you unless you're torrenting or your download manager supports multiple connections.

I have used 4 8Mbps connections, and MPTCP bonds all the WAN connections perfectly through an endpoint (mine was hosted on DigitalOcean). I could use the entire aggregated bandwidth (32Mbps) in a single video stream (or single-threaded download).

https://www.multipath-tcp.org/

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WOW , what an amazing thing !
Thanks for sharing @jayanta525 :wink:
Although I mostly support multiple connections but it may not work in some places and this will be very useful

And what is your budget for this hardware setup? As jayanta525 and I said, mwan3 doesn't bond all the WAN interface so you can't combine all the bandwidth. Either Mikrotik, EdgeRouter or MPTCP.

I didn't understand what you said "mwan3 doesn't bond all the WAN interface" , isn't it what mwan3 is for?
My budget really varies by how much can I proof it will work ( and make it look amazing :wink: ) but maybe not more than 1000$ (usd) and at least 200$ @vanst

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wan/multiwan/mwan3
You can have your own reading here.

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I read it more carefully and (as expected ) you are right ! ( sorry )
It does not bond connections @vanst
I hope there is any solution for my budget

What does this mean in your context?

You cannot "bond" WAN per se, especially since they have different IPs.

If you want to balance multiple connections over the lines, this is something that can be done at your end only. Load balancing lets multiple users have a connection on each line. An example would be a hotel where many guests are loading web pages. The reverse of this is also possible, where you operate a server and multiple users log in on different lines.

True bonding to have a single very fast download or upload to a single point requires cooperation from a machine on the Internet side. All the WAN connections would link to a machine in a data center that has a very fast Internet connection. That machine re-combines the traffic to one IP. This is sometimes offered by an ISP.

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I am currently using OpenWRT, Mikrotik and Cisco routers. With your requirements and budget, better go with any Mikrotik router with the required ports from the below list. I can confirmed that load balancing works well with Mikrotik's RouterOS and there is configuration script you can just copy and paste to have a fully working load balancing. (just do a Google search and you will see)

https://mikrotik.com/products/group/ethernet-routers

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Thanks for explaining .
I don't need to explicitly have one ip downloading whole file that's not important for me I want to use all WAN connections together to download files which supports multiple connections @mk24

Yes we can not , totally agree with you @lleachii