Newbie question: Dual wifi links between towers

[billbuchan]

We're planning on running dual wifi links between towers, and of course since we use switches (as opposed to routers), we're running a flat network (with a *lot* of VLANS).

Question is - how to run duplicate links over wifi between netonix switches?

I tried LAG (LACP-A) and - well - that wasn't what you'd call successful.

Do I just enable STP and let the switches sort it out?


---* Bill

[sirhc]

LACP is not designed to do this, it is more for creating a multi gig trunk between switches and or routers with wired connections.

Use RSTP and then designate one as Primary which will be used unless it fails then it fails over to the secondary link. This is useful when you have a primary AF24 but a secondary 5 GHz link to pick up in heavy rain or it is just a critical link and you want redundancy.

The down side with RSTP is the secondary link does nothing until the primary link fails

[billbuchan]

Thanks - I've dug through the documentation and just came to the same conclusion.

I guess I'll go ahead with RSTP in the short term, and investigate load balancing between Mikrotik routers at each end of the link as a medium term option.

Thanks for the quick response,

---* Bill

P.S. Thats us up to 11 switches - three 12 port rack mounted ones, 6 little six porters and 2 little 12-porters. All working magnificently I should add. Thanks again!

[sirhc]

Thanks Bill

[thebracket]

If its any help, we've had some luck with Mikrotik and the various "bonding" options (I think we ended up with balance_tlb on the one we had running). We found that for anything other than "active backup" (which is basically the same as using spanning tree) to work, the two links had to have very similar overall throughput available - otherwise, it fell apart when the link started to fill up. I think "balance_alb" is supposed to help with that, but we couldn't get it to work at all on our little RB750Gs.
We've since replaced that link with a much larger link that can handle both sets of traffic, and the experience is much better overall - so load balancing like that is in my armory as a last resort!

[LRL]

MSTP or PVSTP in the cisco world would help you out here a little with the two links.

Say you have 10 vlans flowing over the trunks you make link1 the preferred link for vlans 1-5 and you make link2 the preferred for vlans 6-10. The beauty is that the links are still redundant for the non-preferred vlans.

MSTP is on the road map for Netonix, maybe RSTP will tide you over till then?