Question Combining two Internet using Load balancer to boost the total speed.

[prooshani]

Hi guys,
I have 2 Fiber service with the same spec (300 Mb up/ 300 Mb down) at my place.
Using two different modems I could Load Balance the Services using my Asus TuF-AX5400 in Dual WAN mode and Load Balance with 1:1 structure. The total output was 540 Mb up and 500 Mb down which looks perfect.
I have spent a good part of my last week doing the same thing using one GPON (Fiber Modem) instead of two of them.
I can set several WAN connections on my fiber optic modem with different service credentials (PPPoE credentials user/pass) and the WAN connections showing 2 different WAN IP's are connected and all. But when I connect two different LAN ports, which assigned to different VLAN/WANs, it seems like that the Load Balancing does not work as expected.
At this stage, ASUS TuF-AX5400 router (my Load Balancing router) showing 2 WANs are connected properly and the Internet is up and running but the total throughput is showing just the download speed of 300 Mb up and 300 Mb down. It means that only one service is serving load balancer.

Is there anything I have missed?
I already had tried several scenarios like disabling NAT's, assigning Static IP/gateways and so on... but the results was the same.
Two modem works flawlessly but two connection from one modem (two different WAN services) not.

Any help/suggestion is highly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[bill001g]

It maybe some strangeness with how the router treats pppoe sessions and load balancing.

What I would first try is to manually test that both connection can actually be used at the same time. It could be something strange with running 2 session over the gpon. Maybe the ISP has it configured wrong.

You should be able to change the asus to force traffic from one source IP into one connection and another source IP to the other. You should then be able to take 2 pc and independently test the download. If both run at the same time then it is some strangeness with the load balance algorithm on the asus.

Now I am not sure what you think you can accomplish doing this. The only thing that can use both connection is going to be something like torrent. Almost everything else can not use both connections because you have different IP on the 2 different connections.

 

[prooshani]

It maybe some strangeness with how the router treats pppoe sessions and load balancing.

What I would first try is to manually test that both connection can actually be used at the same time. It could be something strange with running 2 session over the gpon. Maybe the ISP has it configured wrong.

You should be able to change the asus to force traffic from one source IP into one connection and another source IP to the other. You should then be able to take 2 pc and independently test the download. If both run at the same time then it is some strangeness with the load balance algorithm on the asus.

Now I am not sure what you think you can accomplish doing this. The only thing that can use both connection is going to be something like torrent. Almost everything else can not use both connections because you have different IP on the 2 different connections.

You are right...
As it is based on fiber, the bandwidth is about 2.5 Gb/s. I have tested the modem and I can get 2 different Wan IP's from 2 different LAN Port of the GPON, which suggests that the PPPoE handling is working fine with several services on the same modem.
As I mentioned before, I have successfully load balanced this scenario using 2 different Modem but failed to do so with one router.
I am suspicious about NAT and gateway issues and load balancer assume this is just ONE WAN is shared between two WANs.

This is not about the Asus router because I already checked with two different model of Dual WAN routers with exact same results.

As I have some kinda using this set up for downloading purpose, it is improving my throughput using load balance two connections.

Thanks anyway.

 

[bill001g]

This all depends on the details of how the asus load balance works.

What I would first check is if they have released the merlin version for that router. It is a very new router and last I saw they were talking first quarter of this year.

This would give you a different firmware to try.

I also suspect the asus is using their asuswrt base so you should be able to look in the source code to see if it treats 2 ppp session differently than actual physical interfaces. It could also be a bug in the asus firmware. What you are trying to do is not very common so maybe you are the first to find the bug.

It tends to be easier to just buy a faster internet connection since the fiber can run 2.5g. ATT is starting to offer 5gbit service on some of their fiber networks. Not a lot of people are going to try to do tricky stuff like you are talking about.

 

[prooshani]

This all depends on the details of how the asus load balance works.

What I would first check is if they have released the merlin version for that router. It is a very new router and last I saw they were talking first quarter of this year.

This would give you a different firmware to try.

I also suspect the asus is using their asuswrt base so you should be able to look in the source code to see if it treats 2 ppp session differently than actual physical interfaces. It could also be a bug in the asus firmware. What you are trying to do is not very common so maybe you are the first to find the bug.

It tends to be easier to just buy a faster internet connection since the fiber can run 2.5g. ATT is starting to offer 5gbit service on some of their fiber networks. Not a lot of people are going to try to do tricky stuff like you are talking about.

As it works fine with two different modems I assume it is not about Asus firmware.

I also tried to handle the PPPoE connection by the asus not the modem and obviously failed.

I just tried the other scenario. To test if the modem can handle two connection at the same time I have managed to setup like this:

GPON Modem LAN1 (assigned to the Internet Service 1) ---> Asus AC86 WAN Port (Got the correct IP and speed)

GPON Modem LAN2 (assigned to the Internet Service 2) ---> Asus AC66U-B1 WAN port (Got the correct IP and speed)

AC86 LAN1 ----> AX5400 WAN1
AC66U-B1 LAN1 ----> AX5400 WAN2 (Dual WAN mode with load balance enabled)

The final result shows that it is about modem not the router and load balance because the final speed was 300/300 which suggest there is no increase in download speed using one modem and two Internet service.

I am just going to test same scenario with two modem. Will update after test.

 

[bill001g]

That is kinda interesting if the ISP Is limiting the speed in the modem. Kinda lets you hack past limits.

Did they actually sell you 2 different PPP plans on the same modem. You would think if they sold you 2 ids it would actually work.

I can't say for sure how it works on gpon but I know there is encryption. If it works like a cable modem there would be 1 encrypted session between the modem mac addresses and the ISP equipment. Both PPPoE session would run over this same encrypted session since pppoe is not secure If they placed the limit on the encrypted session rather than on the PPP session then both would be limited by the same rules rather than having seperate limits based on the ppp session.

 

[prooshani]

That is kinda interesting if the ISP Is limiting the speed in the modem. Kinda lets you hack past limits.

Did they actually sell you 2 different PPP plans on the same modem. You would think if they sold you 2 ids it would actually work.

I can't say for sure how it works on gpon but I know there is encryption. If it works like a cable modem there would be 1 encrypted session between the modem mac addresses and the ISP equipment. Both PPPoE session would run over this same encrypted session since pppoe is not secure If they placed the limit on the encrypted session rather than on the PPP session then both would be limited by the same rules rather than having seperate limits based on the ppp session.

I forgot to mention that my ISP's plan is max limited to 300/300 Mb/s with 500GB download.
I am using this both services to not only speed up my net also to increase my plan to 1 TB.

And yes, I think the reason this is not gonna work is that the ISP communicate with modems using the ONT serial number and maybe the access service behind their network limit's max speed based on modems not the services. There is no extra settings inside the modem, cause I have bought it from thirdparty not the ISP itself.

In fiber structure, it is necessary to register GPON Modem's serial number or MAC address to be able to get the ONT authentication successful. Therefore, I assume the reason behind the speed cap to 300/300 is the access router behind my modem's NAT limited based on modem's serial.

As my services have VLAN ID, I will ask the ISP to put my services on two different VLANs to see if it makes any differences or not.