Load Balancing Help TP LINK TL-R470T+

[Oceans12]

Hey Everyone,

I have a few Load Balancing questions as I am new to the concept and I tried looking for it online but the topic is just too vast to cater to my particular queries.

My current setup

2 ADSL connections = 13 mbps each.
using a simple adsl modem for each and connected both of them to TP LINK TL-R470T+ for load balacing.

the tp link website has some really poor and old user guide but the router works well.

as of now

I am able to combine both bandwidths.

But its a bit tricky . Some places its combined bandwidth . Some place its just not .

The internet is not smart either, to use separate internets smartly ( example one for download game and for netflix)

i have to assume its the configuration which i am complete layman at.

i understand bandiwdth combination depends on TCP/application etc. but what exactly?

Q1. : I am getting 26 mbps on speedtest.net , but not on fast.com or testmy.net ( other popular speed testing websites) ? why ?
(downloads from things like IDM , steam are also combining it . so im happy there)

Q2. : How do i configure the router to smartly distribute bandwidth. Example: My download is on , its using 26mbps .
I turn on TV for netflix, and some bandwidth or lets just say 1 connection of 13 mbps completely switches over and dedicates to the tv while the download continues at 13mbps (THIS IS NOT HAPPENING NOW).

any other info regarding it.

if i left out anything . plz let me know thanks.

 

[bill001g]

This is why Bigip can charge $30,000 for their F5 box that companies use to load balance...although it does much more than what you are trying to do. If it could easily be done with $100 box this company would not even exist.

So first it is not possible to actually combine the bandwidth of a single download/session. This is fundamental to how IP works. Your 2 internet connection have different IP addresses. To the end sites they appear as 2 completely different users. Even with a single IP there are fundamental restrictions in how the communication is done so even 2 session from the same ip can cause issues if the application is not designed to support it.

There are also massive issues with sites that use multiple servers to represent the web site function. The best know example for most users of this forum are online games. There is a login/authentication server and and one or more servers that run the game instance. If your router would use connection 1 to talk to the login server and connection 2 to talk to the game server the game company would detect this as hacking. They would think it was 2 different people. This is also true of say a online merchant that is using a different company to do its credit cards. So if you do your shopping say on connection 1 but when it comes time to pay your router uses connection 2 to connect to the second company again you have a security issue.

The problem is how can any router know how all the different web companies have setup up their sites. Lets say you the person could act as the router how would you solve this problem. If you can't come up with a solution then how could someone write a program. Even your more simplistic requirement for netflix and download. Someone needs to write the software to do what you described. This goes back to why does a F5 box cost $30,000...because they have paid someone to write more advanced software. Even they can not completely solve these issues.

Pretty much you were sold a bunch of marketing hype. The consumer load balancer boxes work great as primary/backup or in situation where you can manually allocate your internal machine to one connection or the other. They also work well when you can build lists of sites. You could say netflix always uses connection 1 and steam always uses connection 2. Almost anything else is going to be pure luck if it works. If you set it in the so called load balance option you are going to get constant security issues with web sites because your ip will appear to change.