After a few months of failed config after config I think I may have finally made some progress. I have not seen results like these until yesterday. I have been trying to achieve higher throughpout combining the three 1Gbps cable Internet services.
I am using 2 Route10’s, 3 WANs (3 X 1Gbps cable connections), and an Asus ExpertWiFi EBG19P.
My father and I have rg6 cable between our houses and we have installed Screenbeam units to extend and connnect our houses. The Screenbeams communicate at up to 2.5 Gbps.
My father has two seperate 1Gbps cable internet WAN services which are combined using the first Route10. The second route10 is at my house with a single cable WAN which combines my 1Gbps cable WAN with my fathers dual WAN.
I have been working on this for so long I am not sure if I am dreaming when i see these results, either way I am a happy man. I do understand that the speeds are somewhat superficial, however i believe there is a lot of potential.
Sorry if this post is hard to follow, its 5am and i haven’t had my coffee yet. I am sure I have left out a lot of details so if anyone has any questions I am happy to answer them.
Have a great day!
just a friendly update:
I have removed all of the Asus hardware that i had implemented and am only using the Alta Route 10s now.
I am seeing a combined speed of around 1800Mbps from the combo of 2 1GB cable services.
I am only seeing a few issues that rarely affect performance but are confusing none the less.
I THINK The route 10 doesn’t like to have more than one public IP address . When i connect both cable modems things start to fail. I am currently using 2 route 10’s, one at each house. The secondary Route 10 assigns a private ip and my modem the public. This seems to be the only way I can get the balancing to work.
Can the route 10 utilize 2 or 3 public IP’s?
( I am taking notes to identify specifics, more info to follow.)
Speed tests are inconsistent, sometimes I will see the combined bandwidth being utilized but other times it appears the Route 10 is only using one of the 2 connections. A reboot of all hardware and it seems to utilize both connection for a while.
Will there be an included speed test implemented into the software eventually?
My modem, and the second route10 (parents house) are my WAN’s however on the devices list only the 2nd route 10 (parents house) Shows traffic. The secondary appears to be utilized or prioritized over my cable modem, OR it just isn’t displaying properly. Even though i have selected WAN2 for the secondary, it seems to always be at the top of the traffic list, which is strange because my modems hits 1150Mbps, and secondary gets around 600-900Mbps, however a lot of the time the speed tests are right around 1150 as if the secondary isn’t being balanced.
Is there a way to prioritize the available balanced WANs?
Speed test (Ookla desktop software) randomly fails to execute test. Displaying no connection available. After a few clicks it seems to respond with under 20ms ping and no packet loss. I am not sure what is causing the failure because i can stream/surf web at same time so I know I have connection.
I have been unsuccessful trying to figure out how to incorporate the 3rd WAN. It doesn’t appear on any of the devices list nor is it included into the load balanced speeds. On paper, if two connections are achieving 1.6-1.9Gbps then the 3rd connection should push it over 2Gbps, it does not. I think the secondary Route 10 is load balancing the 2 modems on site B(unsuccessful balancing), however I am unable to achieve similar speeds to site A(successful balancing)
All in all this has been a very fun experiment that i will continue to tinker with. I wish there were more available options to customize/display the settings that remain hidden at this time. I have no experience with ssh or a direct connection to the route 10 so my ability is limited to the GUI.
Any feedback is welcomed and of course questions too.
Has anyone else experienced similar issues when load balancing?
here is an example of when the load balancing no longer combines the two services. Usually a hard reboot(unplugging the route10), then modem reboot, seems to fix this issue:
this is great I have route 10 with 02 fiber lines connected through the sfp+ ports each line withe the speed of 1.9 Gbps. please can some one help me to combine the two lines
Yes, it can and does work just fine with multiple IPs. These feeds are from all different providers right? Or the same provider? If they’re the same provider you’ve likely self-created an IP conflict in NAT which explains both why they fail when present together, and why NATing it helps, as they’re likely pulling from the same pool.
So.. I need to get this out of the way. Load-balancing does not equal channel bonding. They are 2 completely different things, and from what you’re describing, you want bonding. We don’t currently support SD-WAN. Does your ISP offer MPLS or channel bonding over the WAN? Also, see HERE, and specifically quote:
* Linux outgoing network traffic load-balancing is performed on a per-IP connection basis -- it is not channel-bonding, where a single connection (e.g. a single download) will use multiple WAN connections simultaneously
* As such load-balancing will help speed multiple separate downloads or traffic generated from a group of source PCs all accessing different sites but it will not speed up a single download from one PC (unless the download is spread across multiple IP streams such as by using a download manager)
The multi-WAN daemon on Route10 has no idea about the multi-WAN daemon on Route10 2. Further to that, when the one WAN is NATed that means the traffic will come from one IP/MAC. Right now connections are sticky per MAC, so the one WAN would choose 1 of the WANs and basically move most if not all traffic over it… So outside of having 2 separate multi-WAN daemons taht know nothing about each other.. Then taking a step back, if it helps to view it this way.. mwan3 in general will manage sessions, not packets, so it has no knowledge to boost/aggregate throughput in the way you’re hoping for.
I would expect that sometimes there would be unexpected behaviour in your topology.. Maybe acceleration is misbehaving at times, could try turning it off to rule that out.
Unfortunately what you’re trying to do probably won’t work the way you want it to with what’s currently available. It’s definitely an unintended use of this feature, so is unsupported.
Speedtests are not sufficient data to either prove or disprove what is or isn’t happening with load-balancing in this configuration, or even in general.. It’s a start, maybe, but you’ll need to verify the actual path of the flows across the two routers.. Remember for example, 1 WAN is behind NAT, so for that WAN all traffic comes from one IP/MAC, meaning it’ll always hit 1 WAN only at the other end and would NEVER expect it to be balanced normally like a WAN that is not behind NAT. Rebooting it just makes it more likely to switch back, so I can’t say that’s a sign of it dying, or not.
I think what you’ve achieved so far is admirable. I’m not trying to discourage further tinkering. But the reality is you’ve likely gotten almost all you’ll be able to in this Frankenstein configuration, without leveraging a different feature set. If you do decide to continue, and wish to share further results, fantastic! I wish the best success. However I’m worried that we’re at the point of diminishing returns, where you’re investing more time without making much if any more progress (without different features) .
EDIT: minor correction in point 2, change multi-wan to load-balancing. Plus moved some comments from point 5 to a separate point in the paragraph above this note.
Not sure you’re goals but if you’re looking to literally aggregate the 2 connections we don’t currently support that. Load-balancing will give you an improvement over one when there are either multiple data streams coming from one target or many targets.
Is it possible to max out both lines? Possibly, with the right amount of data streams and computers moving traffic simultaneously. Is it realistic to assume it would work as such 24/7? Absolutely not, unfortunately, because load-balancing is not designed to directly bond connections.
So as long as that limitation is okay, load balancing can improve throughput in some cases.
I don’t think there’s a way to do this in the control interface, but it could probably be done my going to the terminal and creating a rule in the mwan3 config. I don’t have an example for you, but I believe the config file is /etc/config/mwan3 and there should be some information in the link @Alta-MikeD posted up the thread on how to structure the rule.
That all being said, I think it would be neat if there was a simpler way of doing that in the controller as well!
yes same provider but different subnet all together. Wan 1 is 173. and wan2 is 50 WAN3 is also is the 173.
the ISP does not offer any kind of bonding, kind of why im down this awesome rabbit hole. I see a lot of potential in Alta products and look forward to what the futre brings.
Completely understand, maybe you could add it to your list
Is there a way to make them aware of eachother? Or is there a way to set which line to use most?
To combine two Alta Route 10 routers that are each doing multi-WAN load balancing into a single unified network (essentially combining two load-balanced routers), you’re getting into advanced networking territory, but it’s definitely doable. Here’s the honest breakdown of how to tackle it:
Your Goal
You want:
Router A: Load-balancing 2 or more WANs (e.g., ISP1 + ISP2)
Router B: Load-balancing 2 or more WANs (e.g., ISP3 + ISP4)
Master Router or Switch (Router C): Combines both Router A and B’s output into one local network.
High-Level Solution
Option 1: Use One Router as Primary, the Other as a WAN Source
Let’s say:
Router A: Main router for the LAN (your actual local network)
Router B: Treated as a “WAN” input to Router A (through a static IP or DHCP)
Steps:
Set Router B’s LAN IP to a separate subnet (e.g., 192.168.3.1).
Connect Router B’s LAN port to a WAN port on Router A.
On Router A, set WAN interface to DHCP or static to talk to Router B.
Router A now load balances between its own ISPs + the connection to Router B.
This won’t give true aggregation, but it does stack your sources and load balance between them.
Option 2: Use a Dedicated Load-Balancing Appliance or Smart Switch
Use a third device (e.g., a Linux router box, pfsense box, or advanced switch) to combine Router A and B as “WAN sources” into a true Layer 3 router that can intelligently load balance or route traffic.
Workflow:
Router A and B each do their own WAN load balancing.
A third box (Router C) pulls from both of them as WAN inputs.
Your LAN clients get their IP from Router C.
Router C handles actual load balancing between A & B.
You can use:
pfsense/opnsense box
OpenWRT device with multi-WAN scripts
MikroTik or Ubiquiti router
Or a managed switch that supports WAN load balancing
Option 3: Bonding With Manual Routes (Advanced Use Case)
You configure static routes between two routers using a common static route table, and use policy-based routing (PBR) to control how traffic flows between them.
This can allow:
Games go out Router A
Streaming uses Router B
Failover across them both
Important Considerations
You can’t “combine” multiple ISPs for raw speed (true bandwidth aggregation) unless your upstream provider supports bonding or you’re using a cloud VPN tunnel (e.g., Speedify or custom Linux tunnel bonding).
Without a shared gateway or centralized DHCP/DNS, devices behind Router A won’t see those behind Router B.
Suggested Setup for You
Given your interest in gaming + multiple cable ISPs + load balancing, this setup is probably best:
Each Alta Route 10 does its own WAN load balancing.
Plug each into a dedicated pfsense router (could be a mini PC with 3 NICs).
pfsense does:
Multi-WAN combining
Policy-based routing
Failover
DHCP & firewall
Now your whole LAN sits behind the pfsense box, and it’s the boss.
Want me to sketch this out or give you a config example for Alta Route 10 and a pfsense box?
Your Goal
High-Level Solution
This won’t give true aggregation, but it does stack your sources and load balance between them.
Important Considerations
Suggested Setup for You