ethernet aggregation

[MAXXPRO]

hi! i did a recent upgrade from ftth gigabit to 5 gigabit but the modem has a strange set of ethernet ports.
1x 2,5g
2x1g
so i'm asking:
1) is there a "cheap" way to aggregrate those ports and get to 4,5gigabit? something like a switch?
2)is it possible to connect that cable to my pc first ethernet card and out by a second card WHEN pc is turned off ? (image included)

 

thank you

[mariushm]

You could make a software router with a few network cards to take in 2.5gbps and 1 gbps for a total of 4.5 gbps and have a single ethernet output (for example a 10gbps network card).

However, you wouldn't be able to get individual connections run at more than a single card's speed - so some single thread downloads would be capped at 1 gbps, other transfers would be capped at 2.5 gbps etc etc

 

[Windows7ge]

In this scenario I think you're best off finding some sort of multi-client application for this. Trying to aggregate network ports from your router for your home PC isn't really worth the trouble. It's not a simple process and requires compatible equipment. Even then it likely wouldn't work how you want it to.

[Alex Atkin UK]

51 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

In this scenario I think you're best off finding some sort of multi-client application for this. Trying to aggregate network ports from your router for your home PC isn't really worth the trouble. It's not a simple process and requires compatible equipment. Even then it likely wouldn't work how you want it to.

If they were all the same speed it wouldn't be too bad, assuming the modem supports LACP.  I'm not sure if/how it works with ports of different speed though, I'd suspect it might not let you aggregate across different speed ports.

For multiple Gigabit ports though I find on my setup (where currently I have multiple WANs on the router and use LACP for connecting to the LAN switch) it scales well for downloads, but not so much uploads.  This makes sense as downloads are often multi-threaded so will balance across the links whereas uploads are not (but my upload wont be Gigabit anyway).

NOTE:  I don't actually have more than a Gigabit of WAN bandwidth, yet, this was for future proofing with FTTP coming soon.  But I have been monitoring to see how it balances and it seems to work.

 

Bottom line, these insanely fast services are intended to supply multiple clients from the ONT itself, which I'd expect to be a router not modem.  It would make no sense to have a modem only capable of 2.5Gbit if the broadband coming in is faster, but does if its a router and so can serve over all ports.

[Windows7ge]

17 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

If they were all the same speed it wouldn't be too bad, assuming the modem supports LACP.  I'm not sure if/how it works with ports of different speed though, I'd suspect it might not let you aggregate across different speed ports.

For multiple Gigabit ports though I find on my setup (where currently I have multiple WANs on the router and use LACP for connecting to the LAN switch) it scales well for downloads, but not so much uploads.  This makes sense as downloads are often multi-threaded so will balance across the links whereas uploads are not (but my upload wont be Gigabit anyway).

NOTE:  I don't actually have more than a Gigabit of WAN bandwidth, yet, this was for future proofing with FTTP coming soon.  But I have been monitoring to see how it balances and it seems to work.

 

Bottom line, these insanely fast services are intended to supply multiple clients from the ONT itself, which I'd expect to be a router not modem.  It would make no sense to have a modem only capable of 2.5Gbit if the broadband coming in is faster, but does if its a router and so can serve over all ports.

If I'm not mistaken LACP only scales with multiple clients. Or at the very least independent processes. OP wants one computer to do 4.5Gbit. I don't think his goal is to scale. I think he wants the equivalent to SMB Multi-Channel, or iSCSI Multi-Path.

 

Or I've just completely misunderstood his post which is probably the more likely of the two. If the goal is to scale the network then yes you're entirely correct.

 

Don't know about his desire to try and use his PC as a makeshift switch when it's on & off though. I wouldn't recommend trying that.

[MAXXPRO]

thank you all for those info's. 

just to clarify, yes I want 4,5gbit (or more) for my computer.

So the best way to solve this is to buy new internet router compatible with the service but with at least 5gigabit port, is it correct? also a 5gigabit switch for the room of my pc so every gadget can get ethernet speed(of course 1gigabit max) while pc is connected to top speed possible

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

If I'm not mistaken LACP only scales with multiple clients. Or at the very least independent processes. OP wants one computer to do 4.5Gbit. I don't think his goal is to scale. I think he wants the equivalent to SMB Multi-Channel, or iSCSI Multi-Path.

Doesn't seem to, if I fire up a Steam download it balances across both links, slightly better if I limit the hash to layer 2 & 3 only, at least from pfSense.

Then again, Steam downloads probably are a bad case as they tend to use compression so could be CPU bound on such a fast link.

 

39 minutes ago, MAXXPRO said:

thank you all for those info's. 

just to clarify, yes I want 4,5gbit (or more) for my computer.

So the best way to solve this is to buy new internet router compatible with the service but with at least 5gigabit port, is it correct? also a 5gigabit switch for the room of my pc so every gadget can get ethernet speed(of course 1gigabit max) while pc is connected to top speed possible

Its not worth it, as you'd be lucky to find a server that can do that fast.  You have to consider the size of the pipe the other end and even big CDNs want to service as many clients as possible.

You have to bear in mind a lot of servers will be 10Gbit and the beefiest is probably only 100Gbit.  It takes a heck of a lot of CPU power to push that kind of data.

 

The point of a fast connection like that is for concurrent different clients, not to push full speed to a single one.  That's why the modem (which I still suspect is a router) has the ports it does.

[MAXXPRO]

4 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Doesn't seem to, if I fire up a Steam download it balances across both links, slightly better if I limit the hash to layer 2 & 3 only, at least from pfSense.

Then again, Steam downloads probably are a bad case as they tend to use compression so could be CPU bound on such a fast link.

 

Its not worth it, as you'd be lucky to find a server that can do that fast.  You have to consider the size of the pipe the other end and even big CDNs want to service as many clients as possible.

You have to bear in mind a lot of servers will be 10Gbit and the beefiest is probably only 100Gbit.

 

The point of a fast connection like that is for concurrent different clients, not to push to full speed to a single one.

but using only half of that 5gigabit connection is sad. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 minutes ago, MAXXPRO said:

but using only half of that 5gigabit connection is sad. 

I'd find out if it IS a router or not, then you can use the other two ports for other clients to at least get some use out of it.   Though quite frankly how you will ever max that out I do not know.  But then its unlikely to be a guaranteed speed, so its more a peace of mind that you wont be hitting a bottleneck so your latency will remain good.

Of course you could also try asking the ISP why on earth they sent you a modem that is physically incapable of maxing out the package you paid for.

[MAXXPRO]

17 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'd find out if it IS a router or not, then you can use the other two ports for other clients to at least get some use out of it.   Though quite frankly how you will ever max that out I do not know.  But then its unlikely to be a guaranteed speed, so its more a peace of mind that you wont be hitting a bottleneck so your latency will remain good.

Of course you could also try asking the ISP why on earth they sent you a modem that is physically incapable of maxing out the package you paid for.

maybe to cut down costs, maybe because a lot of users have gigabit ports on devices.

the ISP even forgot about WiFi 6.

at the moment it's the best internet I can find and it's also very cheap

 

[Windows7ge]

8 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Doesn't seem to, if I fire up a Steam download it balances across both links, slightly better if I limit the hash to layer 2 & 3 only, at least from pfSense.

Then again, Steam downloads probably are a bad case as they tend to use compression so could be CPU bound on such a fast link.

Then either what I've been taught is wrong or pfSense is calling something LACP when in actuality it's not or they've added a feature to it which you don't find in other router/switch implementations of LACP.

 

That's a whole other ordeal and more real to spread that bandwidth across more than one client. Honestly what I'd do just to get my hands on Symmetrical Gigabit. Meanwhile I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with 100/10  and this guy wants to turn his connection into 4.5Gbit. Feeling jealous right about now.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Then either what I've been taught is wrong or pfSense is calling something LACP when in actuality it's not or they've added a feature to it which you don't find in other router/switch implementations of LACP.

 

That's a whole other ordeal and more real to spread that bandwidth across more than one client. Honestly what I'd do just to get my hands on Symmetrical Gigabit. Meanwhile I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with 100/10  and this guy wants to turn his connection into 4.5Gbit. Feeling jealous right about now.

I didn't expect it to work either as read the same, that the hashing will send all traffic to a specific MAC address down the same link.  Sending data TO pfSense from the LAN does exactly that, uses just one link.  However sending data FROM pfSense to a LAN client, utilises both (or at least it CAN use both, doesn't always as is the nature of how this works with data streams somewhat randomly assigned).  I can confirm this with iperf3.

 

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   930 Mbits/sec  264             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.14  sec  1.08 GBytes   917 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[  7]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   927 Mbits/sec  274             sender
[  7]   0.00-10.14  sec  1.08 GBytes   914 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  2.16 GBytes  1.86 Gbits/sec  538             sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.14  sec  2.16 GBytes  1.83 Gbits/sec                  receiver

 

I'm waiting on FTTP myself right now, should be here by the end of the year but will be 1000/115.   Another provider is coming though which is symmetrical I will switch to later.

Meanwhile a friend of mine in Texas is stuck on 16/1 or something like that so I know I'm lucky to have 76/18 VDSL right now, even more so with access to 5G as well (though all mobile services seem somewhat unreliable at peak hours).

 

So its always somewhat amusing to helping be people on here with such insane speeds that surpass anything I will have access to any time soon, and I'm still in a fortunate position of being well covered (or will be soon).

[MAXXPRO]

34 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I didn't expect it to work either as read the same, that the hashing will send all traffic to a specific MAC address down the same link.  Sending data TO pfSense from the LAN does exactly that, uses just one link.  However sending data FROM pfSense to a LAN client, utilises both (or at least it CAN use both, doesn't always as is the nature of how this works with data streams somewhat randomly assigned).  I can confirm this with iperf3.

 

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   930 Mbits/sec  264             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.14  sec  1.08 GBytes   917 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[  7]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   927 Mbits/sec  274             sender
[  7]   0.00-10.14  sec  1.08 GBytes   914 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  2.16 GBytes  1.86 Gbits/sec  538             sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.14  sec  2.16 GBytes  1.83 Gbits/sec                  receiver

 

I'm waiting on FTTP myself right now, should be here by the end of the year but will be 1000/115.   Another provider is coming though which is symmetrical I will switch to later.

Meanwhile a friend of mine in Texas is stuck on 16/1 or something like that so I know I'm lucky to have 76/18 VDSL right now, even more so with access to 5G as well (though all mobile services seem somewhat unreliable at peak hours).

 

So its always somewhat amusing to helping be people on here with such insane speeds that surpass anything I will have access to any time soon, and I'm still in a fortunate position of being well covered (or will be soon).

my connection is not symmetrical, 5Gbit down but only 700Mbit up. by the way first time I read about fttP.. looks similar to ftth but without street cabinet. because of that looks like latency could be better on fttp!

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, MAXXPRO said:

my connection is not symmetrical, 5Gbit down but only 700Mbit up. by the way first time I read about fttP.. looks similar to ftth but without street cabinet. because of that looks like latency could be better on fttp!

 

 

FTTP is just a different name for the same thing.  Both either come directly from the exchange/data centre or a street cabinet if the exchange is too far away or its just more cost effective (already enough bandwidth at the cabinet without having to run new fibres).

As for not being symmetrical, they might be using older technology (XGPON) to save money.  The actual package speed they deliver can be just about anything, depending on how honest they're being about the "average" speed or how many customers they expect per PON to be maxing out their package.  Its never guaranteed you can hit your package speed consistently for obvious reasons when you see below the actual bandwidth available for all customers combined on that PON (a PON basically is a shared fibre amongst a certain number of customers).

[MAXXPRO]

38 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

FTTP is just a different name for the same thing.  Both either come directly from the exchange/data centre or a street cabinet if the exchange is too far away or its just more cost effective (already enough bandwidth at the cabinet without having to run new fibres).

As for not being symmetrical, they might be using older technology (XGPON) to save money.  The actual package speed they deliver can be just about anything, depending on how honest they're being about the "average" speed or how many customers they expect per PON to be maxing out their package.  Its never guaranteed you can hit your package speed consistently for obvious reasons when you see below the actual bandwidth available for all customers combined on that PON (a PON basically is a shared fibre amongst a certain number of customers).

epon

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 minutes ago, MAXXPRO said:

epon

Probably 10G-EPON then.  A bit rough if its the asymmetric version as effectively Gigabit upstream shared to all users.

[MAXXPRO]

5 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Probably 10G-EPON then.  A bit rough if its the asymmetric version as effectively Gigabit upstream shared to all users.

so let's hope my neighbours stay away from fiber

[Windows7ge]

7 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I didn't expect it to work either as read the same, that the hashing will send all traffic to a specific MAC address down the same link.  Sending data TO pfSense from the LAN does exactly that, uses just one link.  However sending data FROM pfSense to a LAN client, utilises both (or at least it CAN use both, doesn't always as is the nature of how this works with data streams somewhat randomly assigned).  I can confirm this with iperf3.

I wonder. Do you think it would still make sense to say it's possible that although the data is being sent across multiple interfaces that the aggregated throughput can't exceed that of a single interface to a single client? This in a theoretical limitation. I can't say if this is the case myself. I've never tried it.

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

I wonder. Do you think it would still make sense to say it's possible that although the data is being sent across multiple interfaces that the aggregated throughput can't exceed that of a single interface to a single client? This in a theoretical limitation. I can't say if this is the case myself. I've never tried it.

Seeing as we've identified upstream doesn't aggregate on a single client (its only aggregating on traffic from a client to the switch), that would make sense.  We've perhaps been misunderstanding what was meant all along, that it can only aggregate in one direction and then its limited by how the client at the other end is connected.

As the client I am sending to is on 10Gbit, its NOT exceeding the speed of its single port. But if it was also dual 1Gbit, the same rules would apply and it would be limited to a single ports speed.