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Manual:Interface/Bonding
From MikroTik Wiki
< Manual:Interface
Summary
Bonding is a technology that allows aggregation of multiple ethernet-like interfaces into a single virtual link,
thus getting higher data rates and providing failover.
Specifications
Packages required: system
License required: Level1
Submenu level: /interface bonding
Standards and Technologies: None
Hardware usage: Not significant
Quick Setup Guide

Let us assume that we have 2 NICs in each router (Router1 and Router2) and want to get maximum data rate
between 2 routers. To make this possible, follow these steps:
Make sure that you do not have IP addresses on interfaces which will be enslaved for bonding
interface!
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Add bonding interface on Router1:
And on Router2:
Add addresses to bonding interfaces:
Test the link from Router1:
Link monitoring
It is critical that one of the available link monitoring options is enabled. In the above example, if one of the
bonded links were to fail, the bonding driver will still continue to send packets over the failed link which
will lead to network degradation. Bonding in RouterOS currently supports two schemes for monitoring a
link state of slave devices: MII and ARP monitoring. It is not possible to use both methods at the same time
due to restrictions in the bonding driver.
ARP Monitoring
ARP monitoring sends ARP queries and uses the response as an indication that the link is operational. This
also gives assurance that traffic is actually flowing over the links. If balance-rr and balance-xor modes are
set, then the switch should be configured to evenly distribute packets across all links. Otherwise all replies
from the ARP targets will be received on the same link which could cause other links to fail. ARP
monitoring is enabled by setting three properties link-monitoring, arp-ip-targets and arp-interval.
Meaning of each option is described later in this article. It is possible to specify multiple ARP targets that
can be useful in High Availability setups. If only one target is set, the target itself may go down. Having
additional targets increases the reliability of the ARP monitoring.
Enable ARP monitoring
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We will not change arp-interval value in our example, RouterOS sets arp-interval to 100ms by default.
Unplug one of the cables to test if the link monitoring works correctly, you will notice some ping timeouts
until arp monitoring detects link failure.
MII monitoring
MII monitoring monitors only the state of the local interface. In RouterOS it is possible to configure MII
monitoring in two ways:
MII Type 1 - device driver determines whether link is up or down. If device driver does not support
this option then link will appear as always up.
MII Type 2 - deprecated calling sequences within the kernel are used to determine if link is up. This
method is less efficient but can be used on all devices. This mode should be set only if MII type 1 is
not supported.
Main disadvantage is that MII monitoring can't tell if the link can actually pass packets or not, even if the
link is detected as being up.
MII monitoring is configured by setting the variables link-monitoring mode and mii-interval.
Enable MII Type2 monitoring:
We will leave mii-interval to it's default value (100ms)

When unplugging one of the cables, the failure will be detected almost instantly compared to ARP link
monitoring.
Bonding modes
802.3ad
802.3ad mode is an IEEE standard also called LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol). It includes
automatic configuration of the aggregates, so minimal configuration of the switch is needed. This standard
also mandates that frames will be delivered in order and connections should not see mis-ordering of packets.
The standard also mandates that all devices in the aggregate must operate at the same speed and duplex
mode and works only with MII link monitoring.
LACP balances outgoing traffic across the active ports based on hashed protocol header information and
accepts incoming traffic from any active port. The hash includes the Ethernet source and destination address
and if available, the VLAN tag, and the IPv4/IPv6 source and destination address. How this is calculated
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depends on transmit-hash-policy parameter.
Configuration example
Example connects two ethernet interfaces on a router to the Edimax switch as a single, load balanced and
fault tolerant link. More interfaces can be added to increase throughput and fault tolerance. Since frame
ordering is mandatory on Ethernet links then any traffic between two devices always flows over the same
physical link limiting the maximum speed to that of one interface. The transmit algorithm attempts to use as
much information as it can to distinguish different traffic flows and balance across the available interfaces.
Router R1 configuration:
Configuration on a switch:
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Notice that LACP is enabled on first trunk group (TRK1) and switch ports on first trunk group are bound
with 'v' flag. In our case port 2 and port4 will run LACP.
Verify if LACP is working: On the switch we should first verify if LACP protocol is enabled and running:
After that we can ensure that LACP negotiated with our router. If you don't see both ports on the list then
something is wrong and LACP is not going to work.
After we verified that switch successfully negotiated LACP with our router, we can start traffic from Client1
and Client2 to the Server and check how traffic is evenly forwarded through both bonding slaves:
balance-rr
If this mode is set, packets are transmitted in sequential order from the first available slave to the last.
Balance-rr is the only mode that will send packets across multiple interfaces that belong to the same TCP/IP
connection.
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When utilizing multiple sending and multiple receiving links, packets are often received out of order, which
result in segment retransmission, for other protocols such as UDP it is not a problem if client software can
tolerate out-of-order packets.
If switch is used to aggregate links together, then appropriate switch port configuration is required, however
many switches do not support balance-rr.
Quick setup guide demonstrates use of the balance-rr bonding mode. As you can see, it is quite simple to set
up. Balance-rr is also useful for bonding several wireless links, however it requires equal bandwidth for all
bonded links. If bandwidth of one bonded link drops, then total bandwidth of bond will be equal to the
bandwidth of the slowest bonded link.
active-backup
This mode uses only one active slave to transmit packets. The additional slave only becomes active if the
primary slave fails. The MAC address of the bonding interface is presented onto the active port to avoid
confusing the switch. Active-backup is the best choice in high availability setups with multiple switches that
are interconnected.
balance-xor
This mode balances outgoing traffic across the active ports based on the hashed protocol header information
and accepts incoming traffic from any active port. Mode is very similar to LACP except that it is not
standardized and works with layer-3-and-4 hash policy.
broadcast
When ports are configured with broadcast mode, all slave ports transmit the same packets to the destination
to provide fault tolerance. This mode does not provide load balancing.
balance-tlb
This mode balances outgoing traffic by peer. Each link can be a different speed and duplex mode and no
specific switch configuration is required as for the other modes. Downside of this mode is that only MII link
monitoring is supported and incoming traffic is not balanced. Incoming traffic will use the link that is
configured as "primary".
Configuration example
Lets assume than router has two links - ether1 max bandwidth is 10Mbps and ether2 max bandwidth is
5Mbps.
First link has more bandwidth so we set it as primary link
No additional configuration is required for the switch.
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Image above illustrates how balance-tlb mode works. As you can see router can communicate to all the
clients connected to the switch with a total bandwidth of both links (15Mbps). But as you already know,
balance-tlb is not balancing incoming traffic. In our example clients can communicate to router with total
bandwidth of primary link which is 10Mbps in our configuration.
balance-alb
Mode is basically the same as balance-tlb but incoming traffic is also balanced. Only additional downside
of this mode is that it requires device driver capability to change MAC address. Most of the cheap cards do
not support this mode.
Image above illustrates how balance-alb mode works. Compared to balance-tlb mode, traffic from
clients can also use the secondary link to communicate with the router.
Property Description
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Notes
Link failure detection and failover is working significantly better with expensive network cards, for
example, made by Intel, then with more cheap ones. On Intel cards for example, failover is taking place in
less than a second after link loss, while on some other cards, it may require up to 20 seconds. Also, the
Active load balancing (mode=balance-alb) does not work on some cheap cards.
L2 MTU of bonding interface is determined by taking smallest value of all slaves.
See also
Bonding presentation at the MUM (http://wiki.mikrotik.com/images/f/f7/X1-Bondingv01.2006.pdf)
Bonding Examples
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Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

Quick Setup Guide

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

Add bonding interface on Router1:

Add addresses to bonding interfaces:

Test the link from Router1:

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

We will leave mii-interval to it's default value (100ms)

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

depends on transmit-hash-policy parameter.

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

No additional configuration is required for the switch.

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

Manual:Interface/Bonding - MikroTik Wiki

L2 MTU of bonding interface is determined by taking smallest value of all slaves.

This page was last modified on 2 February 2015, at 17:16.

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