Link Aggregation, ASUS RT-AC5300 on a Mac Pro

[Miguel Santa]

Have anyone tried to do Link Aggregation? I believe the ASUS RT-AC53000 is capable on ports 1 and 2 and Mac OS X with a Mac with 2 ethernet ports can be used. What are the benefits of using that feature?

 

[pete y testing]

What are the benefits of using that feature?

absolutely nothing unless you want to use your mac as the file sharing device / nas for your lan / wlan

the way link aggregation works mean that more than 1 client can transfer to and from the link aggregated device at max speed , think of it as almost like mu-mimo , it wont however make your internet any faster if just using the mac

 

[System Error Message]

or if on a managed switch you can link aggregrate 2 PCs so they have 2 links between them for double bandwidth or have multiple links between switches for reduced bottleneck. Or perhaps for dual gigabit WANs or for wifi of 2Gb/s practical rates to wire. The ac5300 can only do 1 LACP using 2 ports. you can also do it for fun or for no particular reason.

This isnt just about the 2 clients 1 server situation.

 

[sfx2000]

or if on a managed switch you can link aggregrate 2 PCs so they have 2 links between them for double bandwidth. Or perhaps for dual gigabit WANs or for wifi of 2Gb/s practical rates to wire. The ac5300 can only do 1 LACP using 2 ports.

This isnt just about the 2 clients 1 server situation.

Port Teaming and LAG's don't double the speed (or other multiples for that matter), but they will double capacity...

Good example here would be a web server in a data center - if we've only got Gigabit in the top of rack switch, we can assign multiple ports to a LAG, and connect multiple cables - we have an aggregate of Gigabit(n), but each connection will only be a gigabit...

Many folks get this item confused, and the blog-o-sphere doesn't help matters any...

Someone must have recently blogged about this (along with VLAN's) as we've seen a heightened interest in both these topics in the past few weeks...

 

[System Error Message]

Port Teaming and LAG's don't double the speed (or other multiples for that matter), but they will double capacity...

Good example here would be a web server in a data center - if we've only got Gigabit in the top of rack switch, we can assign multiple ports to a LAG, and connect multiple cables - we have an aggregate of Gigabit(n), but each connection will only be a gigabit...

Many folks get this item confused, and the blog-o-sphere doesn't help matters any...

Someone must have recently blogged about this (along with VLAN's) as we've seen a heightened interest in both these topics in the past few weeks...

Havent seen any consumer routers offering vlans on LAN side.

I have actually tested LACP between different devices, they do work. If you had a PC with 2 ports and another PC with 2 ports and you connect them to a managed switch, configure them for LACP and the switch and ports are at 1Gb/s than they will transfer between them 2Gb/s per direction, 4Gb/s total that they can pass between them. Its annoying when people say that LACP doesnt benefit and i have never said that they increased speed, always bandwidth or faster transfers.

Maybe i should blog about it and explain that even if you do it for fun you still benefit from other things such as using it with a switch as some have experienced bottlenecks connecting wifi router to switch using LAN and WAN at the same time for various devices. Many who are experienced and old in this industry still think in the old way of the 2 clients 1 server benefit when there are various ways that LACP benefits such as redundant links so even if the bandwidth is combined if 1 link goes down things still operate normally. Or you can do it because thats what all the cool kids are doing .

Problems arise when you have switches or devices that do not support load balancing LACP types.

 

[Miguel Santa]

It doesn't really pay to connect it to the router since all the file transfer that I will be doing if through the ftp external hid have connected to the router


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pete y testing]

I have actually tested LACP between different devices, they do work. If you had a PC with 2 ports and another PC with 2 ports and you connect them to a managed switch, configure them for LACP and the switch and ports are at 1Gb/s than they will transfer between them 2Gb/s per direction,

thats with a switch that can do multiple link aggregation connections , eg both devices are connected to the switch and its handling the link aggregation

the 5300 has only 1 pair of ports that can be used for aggregation so only 1 device can connect via aggregation , all others connect as single clients and so will only do 1 gig max or approx 117 MB/s for a single client and is less as more client try and download from the 5300

so the OP's question is what benefit will be see if he connects his mac to the link aggregation ports and the answer remains nothing other than other client device can move data to and from it faster , eg 2 client devices can download from it at around 117MB/s each once more than 2 devices start to download the same thing happens as in a single connection and the speed is halved or shared

other than that the mac its self see's no real benefit in internet use etc

 

[Miguel Santa]

Thanks for the clarification!

 

[sfx2000]

If you had a PC with 2 ports and another PC with 2 ports and you connect them to a managed switch, configure them for LACP and the switch and ports are at 1Gb/s than they will transfer between them 2Gb/s per direction, 4Gb/s total that they can pass between them. Its annoying when people say that LACP doesnt benefit and i have never said that they increased speed, always bandwidth or faster transfers.

doesn't work like that...

It does help with capacity - but sessions on the MAC layer need to be aligned... can't split packets at the IP layer as ethernet gets in the way... and there, it's aligned - hence, whether's it's one or twenty, each link through the stack does what it must...

Goes back to my discussion about being at the store, and the number of checkout counters.... more counters, more aggregate throughput, but each counter moves at a certain pace, and each checker is a session, and to get to a total, can't split lanes - hence, each session will proceed at pace of the link given...

IETF/IEEE hat proudly worn here... basic network stuff... and sometimes tribal knowledge is wrong, that's why we have smoke monsters like this...

 

[applesnowleo]

Hello, I have a mac pro Late 2013, and the AC5300, I have the link aggregation config on 3 devices the NAS, The Router and the Mac Pro.

I have LAG1 from ac5300 connected to the switch for multiple acesses to the server from wireless clients.

The advantage of LAG on the mac pro is if you are downloading and uploading to the NAS on one Ethernet and at the same time doing it to another computer on the network, this way you can use the 2 connections at the same time and get 200 up, 200 down, useful if running OS X server.

I use a L2 switch for multiple LAG connections, the LAG on the AC5300 is good to connect a qnap or synology and stream to more than one source at a time I do not see another advantage at home.

 

[Miguel Santa]

Hi applesnowleo,
Can you explain how you connected your Mac Pro late 2013 to the ASUS AC5300 and setup link aggregation?