Hi mikrotik colleages.
We need some help here!
I have the next situation;

Mikrotik 133c_placeA
wlan1 = SR5 ubiquiti
ether1 = OnBoard
ether2 = OnBoard
ether3 = OnBoard

Mikrotik 133c_placeB
wlan1 = SR5 ubiquiti
ether1 = OnBoard
ether2 = OnBoard
ether3 = OnBoard

I have got 2 RADlink-RADIOS Bridges between placeA and placeB each of them connected to
ether1 of mikrotik respectively.
I want to make a "bonding" to get redundance and load balancing between placeA and place
B, I mean to bond RADlink and wlan1.
then I would need to bridge "bonding interface" and ether2.
I dont need to route anything, I just need to bridge placeA to placeB.
I have already done it but it doesnt work as I spected. I dont loose the link between
places when I carry out the "bonding" but I cant tranfer information, I loose the
control of mikrotik through wireless too. What could be happening? Is it "bonding"
similar to "bridging"? because I know I cant perform a bridge with 802.11 as it is but
yes making a WDS.

RESUME:
bridge[ (ether2) , bondign( wlan1 , ether1 ) ]

I hope some body can help me!
Thanks in Advance
Ivan Perino

You should be able to put a bonding interface on both wlan1 and ether1. Thats about it.

Else you are better off putting a /30 on the wireless links and let STP or OSFP route it for you.

Simply put, bridging is not capable of doing most of what you are looking for, mainly the balancing. The STP would allow you to fail over, but there is not really a method of setting a priority or preferance on it.

Dennis Burgess
St. Louis Network Engineering Services
http://www.mikrotikconsulting.com
dmburgess@mikrotikconsulting.com
Certified Mikrotik Engineer

Dennis, I wanted to thank you for your response, however I have tryed to do this bonding but it doesnt work.

I suppose you have understood what I did. I dont need neither STP or OSPF. I want a flat NET, I mean, it´s suppose I am be able to bridge 2 interfaces where one of them is a bonding interface that is ether1 bridged to bonding1.

The radio link is working on nstream protocol right now and its performance is very well but when I bond the interface wlan1 and ether2 in both sides, it doesnt work anymore. I can see the client registration up on AP side and ap registration up on client side but there is not data transfering between them. At this time, I have not bridged anything.

I wish this because I need balancing and faiover as bonding promises me.

I will keep trying on this until I get it or I exhaust my self!

I am sorry for my poor english if it is not so well. Thank you a lot Dennis

There may be more to it, personally, there is NO reason to have bridged network. So, I would route it, and then use both links in a full duplex fashion. A script would do your failover. The bonding should work, however, you may have to put that bonded interface in the bridge then.

I found the problem. You cant bond wlan interface if it is in nstreme mode. All this works fine if I use 802.11 standard, the problem is I need nstreme because the distance.

If you know some solution to make this I will thank you.

Ivan Perino

You could create an EoIP tunnel over the NStreme link and then bond the EoIP interfaces...

Best regards,
Christian Meis

Thanks Christian. I will do that.

I´d like to ask you another little problem. I achieved a 70km link with two SR5 over nstreme protocol and its bandwith is more than 10Mbps, (I think it is excelent) but there is too much packet retransmision, the CCQ is about 48% there by there is a lot of packet retransmision if I am not mistaken.
Then, IP calling (VoIP) isn´t good quality.
What sould I do to improve the link quality (CCQ)?

The link is working on 5GHz TURBo mode, nstreme protocol and the Signal sensivity is around [-65dbm]

Thanks again Christian, I have seen you answer the most of cuestion.
Ivan Perino
Argentina

A low CCQ value means that there is a significant amount of packets that have to be retransmitted.
This also is showing up in your problems with low voice quality in VoIP calls, where you can easily "hear" your retransmission problems .

There's no single thing to do here, but you have to check for problems that could create packet loss and how to correct those (if possible).
There are many things to look for, some examples:

• interference/noise from other RF equipment/WLAN on the same/near frequencies (what's the noise level?)
  not completely free Fresnel zone
  problems with ack timeout on longer links (although not the case for a NStreme link)
  ...

Best regards,
Christian Meis

Christian.

I have found some interesting things.
I have already checked the fresnel zone, interference, etc. It seems fine.

But,,,,

Changing Tx_power and DataRate parameters and watching CCQ values I found irregular behavior.
- The most DataRate I force, the most CCQ I get.
but, to get Higher datarate I need to low Tx_power!! then
- The higher Tx power I configure, the least DataRate I get (when datarate is in default mode)

It could be happening? YES! IT IS.
May be the SR5 cards from ubiquiti are not so good. May be the OFDM amplifier?
I have not tested with R52 cards

here you are some values from the test.

FORCED TO___TXPOWER_____CCQ%
6Mbps________17dBm_______16/19
6Mbps________20dBm_______17/19
48/54Mbps____20dBm________no-link (the link is out because the power )
48/54Mbps____14dBm________86/91 (the link is done, but the signal stregth is very low, it is at the edge of -71dBm)

Well Christian, it is very weird for me, I hope you can help me.
I will looking forward for your response.
Thank you a lot.
Best regards
Ivan Perino

gmsmstr wrote:
> personally, there is NO reason to have bridged network

We are using bridging to implement a wireless mesh in 802.11a. We are using MTs with one or two 802.11a radios for the mesh, and one b/g radio for clients. Right now, only the "master" MT has an ethernet connection, which is bridged to the 'a' radio(s). The "slave" MTs have the same bridge configured between their 'a' radios, and their unplugged ethernet port (which is configured on the same subnet as the master MT, to address them as though they were connected to our internal network). When we power up a slave MT, it connects to the 802.11a mesh as soon as it finishes booting, and clients can connect through it.

So far, so good. Now, since we will have an ethernet line available at some of our installations, we would like to be able to use it to offload some of our mesh traffic, and also to provide fail-over if one or the other goes down. But when I bond the (already bridged) ethernet and 'a' interfaces, the box essentially drops off the net. On one occasion, I had to use the serial port to undo the changes and get it back online.

Can this be done? If so, how?