This is a neat idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to achieve a similar effect natively on Linux ? i.e. make the linux network stack load-balance all outgoing connections to all available interfaces ?
Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
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Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#12This is a neat idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to achieve a similar effect natively on Linux ? i.e. make the linux network stack load-balance all outgoing connections to all available interfaces ?
I'm pretty sure you can do this sort of load balancing on Linux without having to install any extra software, at the IP level, with the "ip rule" and "iptables" commands.
EDIT: Yep: https://home.regit.org/netfilter-en/links-load-balancing/
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#13I use Super Download on Android that does the same thing.. Always wondered how they pulled it off.
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#14Nice. Interesting that you're doing it at the userland level and balancing across IP address and not interfaces. I may find a use for this. (On a network rate limited by IP address, not per physical connection or per MAC address, and allows me to use multiple IPs. Go figure.)
I haven't set this up myself, but I think the iptables method for doing this is `nexthop via`. Never found any great documentation, but this seems to describe it: http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html
I think the iptables method balances across interfaces, not IPs. But I want to balance across IP aliases (multiple IPs, same interface). And I'm usually on a Mac. So I may see if dispatch-proxy is a better choice.
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#15This is a neat idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to achieve a similar effect natively on Linux ? i.e. make the linux network stack load-balance all outgoing connections to all available interfaces ?
"Bonding" at the kernel level:
The Linux bonding driver provides a method for aggregating multiple network interfaces into a single logical "bonded" interface. The behavior of the bonded interfaces depends on the mode. Generally speaking, modes provide either hot standby or load balancing services. Additionally, link integrity monitoring may be performed.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/bonding....
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#16This is a neat idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to achieve a similar effect natively on Linux ? i.e. make the linux network stack load-balance all outgoing connections to all available interfaces ?
There's been work in this direction: http://multipath-tcp.org/
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#17moderns systems comes with TCP Multipath enabled.
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#18This is a neat idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to achieve a similar effect natively on Linux ? i.e. make the linux network stack load-balance all outgoing connections to all available interfaces ?
I'm pretty sure you can do this sort of load balancing on Linux without having to install any extra software, at the IP level, with the "ip rule" and "iptables" commands. EDIT: Yep: https://home.regit.org/netfilter-en/links-load-balancing/
TL;DR just buy a faster internet connection.
It is possible to do per-packet load sharing in Linux as the link above suggests. Both links need to be able to source traffic using the same IP address, i.e. you can't mix comcast and dsl. The way to get around this is to have an upstream router that will source your traffic from the same IP address:
client - routerD --upstream1---routerU -- the internets |-------upstream2-----|
The iptables statistic module with random mode seems to work better than nth packet.
Keep in mind PPS load sharing is not the most effective way to utilize links as retransmissions will slow things down. Now if you have two links to the same provider it's probably OK. You can even buy a bonded connection from most providers where they do all of this for you.
You are much better off doing flow based ECMP routing: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/net/0207.2/0047.html
ECMP is only useful if you have a large number of clients. So you can do PPS load sharing, knowing full well that it's going to be slower than a single link some percentage of the time or just buy a faster connection.
TL;DR again, just buy a faster connection.
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#19Can anyone explain how this works? From previous experience I always thought that this was not possible without some cooperation on the other end because the problem is you want to split the data being sent to you to different ips. If the other end sends all the data to the same ip, you cannot redirect/load balance to other ips before the data actually gets to you. What am I missing?
Re: Combine your Wi-Fi, Ethernet and 3G connections to increase your download speed
#20Can anyone explain how this works? From previous experience I always thought that this was not possible without some cooperation on the other end because the problem is you want to split the data being sent to you to different ips. If the other end sends all the data to the same ip, you cannot redirect/load balance to other ips before the data actually gets to you. What am I missing?
Probably each TCP connection only goes over one IP address, so the remote end doesn't get confused. All the data coming back on that connection will have to come in on the same path the connection started on.