About Load Balancing Routers

[Mohsen_mzh]

Hi
I recently bought a tp-link TL-R480T+, I know I should lower my expectations and it doesn't completely make internet speed combined. I have some questions.
What does it do when online gaming? as we can only connect with single IP address
What's my IP address when I browse web sites?
Does it make streaming faster when I watch videos online?
And please guide me how to config my router. I have two routers connected to internet which I want to combine.

Thanks in advance.

 

[bill001g]

The think it will do well is primary/backup. The next thing that is fairly easy to do is have it run certain ip in your house over certain connections, like machines 1&2 user isp 1 and machines 3&4use isp 2.

All other configurations tend to be a massive effort.

When you run a online game you have to make sure all game traffic is using the same ISP connection. If the router would send traffic to the authentication server over one connection and the game server over the other the game company would detect that as a hack and drop the session

If you use the option for the router to just load balance it will spray your connections over both so you could get connections to the same web site running on both. That is fine for many sights but like game companies things like your bank will have multiple servers behind and detect it as errors

Videos will only use a single connection. This is a key restriction with how the internet works. A single session is identified by the ip and port addresses on each end of the connection. When you run traffic over both ISP you have different IP and they can not be part of the same connection. This is a fundamental thing on how IP works.

Unless you can live with it running some machines over one connection and other over the other it is a massive amount of work

You pretty much must key in the IP addresses of the servers that appear as a single group and make sure they always use the same session. For example you would have to find all the IP of say "game comapny1" and tell it to use ISP1 for all traffic. Since the PC is doing the DNS the router does not see the names so you must have actual IP addresses.

 

[Mohsen_mzh]

The think it will do well is primary/backup. The next thing that is fairly easy to do is have it run certain ip in your house over certain connections, like machines 1&2 user isp 1 and machines 3&4use isp 2.

All other configurations tend to be a massive effort.

When you run a online game you have to make sure all game traffic is using the same ISP connection. If the router would send traffic to the authentication server over one connection and the game server over the other the game company would detect that as a hack and drop the session

If you use the option for the router to just load balance it will spray your connections over both so you could get connections to the same web site running on both. That is fine for many sights but like game companies things like your bank will have multiple servers behind and detect it as errors

Videos will only use a single connection. This is a key restriction with how the internet works. A single session is identified by the ip and port addresses on each end of the connection. When you run traffic over both ISP you have different IP and they can not be part of the same connection. This is a fundamental thing on how IP works.

Unless you can live with it running some machines over one connection and other over the other it is a massive amount of work

You pretty much must key in the IP addresses of the servers that appear as a single group and make sure they always use the same session. For example you would have to find all the IP of say "game comapny1" and tell it to use ISP1 for all traffic. Since the PC is doing the DNS the router does not see the names so you must have actual IP addresses.

so it only works only when I browse regular web sites and download files? and on other cases like bank transactions or online gaming I should disable load balancing? is it right?
and it doesn't help for watching online videos either?
I'm starting to think it as a waste of money now :-/

 

[bill001g]

Even normal web sites may have issues. A web page is made up of many connections to many server and you never really know you get strange errors at times you use 2 ip addresses.

Downloading files is not improved either since most times that is a single connection. Bit torrent though tends to not be as affected.

It works best when you have a specific need. For example you want all your netflix traffic on one and all your downloads on the other. It still is not trivial to configure.

 

[Mohsen_mzh]

Even normal web sites may have issues. A web page is made up of many connections to many server and you never really know you get strange errors at times you use 2 ip addresses.

Downloading files is not improved either since most times that is a single connection. Bit torrent though tends to not be as affected.

It works best when you have a specific need. For example you want all your netflix traffic on one and all your downloads on the other. It still is not trivial to configure.

Thank you, that helped alot. Even though now I regret that I bought the router.