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RAX80, link aggregation and access point mode
I'm reconfiguring my network and hope to replace the GS116 unmanaged switch on my network with a managed one that does link aggregation. I changed my RAX80 wifi router over to access point mode and i've noticed that it's not possible to configure link aggregation. Does link aggregation even work with access point mode or do I have to disable access point mode in order to configure LAG?
4 Replies
Although I never got an answer on this, I figured this out in case anyone needs to try this. To recap, there doesn't seem to be any guidance on using Link Aggregation (LAG) while the RAX80 is in Access Point (AP) mode. The RAX80 can do LAG on the Internet + Ethernet port 1 for WAN operation and for LAN on ports 4 and 5. When configured for AP, the LAG option for WAN is grayed out. So I tried going back to regular router mode, configuring LAG with my upstream switch (which worked) and then going back to AP mode. But once LAG for WAN is configured, AP mode is no longer available from the menus.
But I noticed that Link Aggregation is still available on the LAN ports (4 and 5) in AP mode. The diagram for AP mode shows that you should plug the RAX80 into the upstream router with the Internet port, but my testing showed that AP mode turns all of the ports into LAN ports so it doesn't matter which one you use. Configuring ports 4 & 5 for LAG is possible in AP mode and thus, I can accomplish what I wanted to do the same way, just with different ports.
> [...] I can accomplish what I wanted to do the same way, just with
> different ports.Perhaps, but before I got all triumphant, I'd want to make sure that
all the more subtle features requiring Internet access from the
router-as-WAP will work when the WAN/Internet port is not used for the
connection to the main LAN. For example:Does the router-as-WAP have the correct date+time? (Or can it not
communicate with a time server?)Does a non-manual firmware update still work? (Or can it not
communicate with a firmware-update server?)> [...] my testing showed that AP mode turns all of the ports into LAN
> ports so it doesn't matter which one you use. [...]How thorough was your testing?
Does this scheme actually improve the speed?
antinode wrote:> Perhaps, but before I got all triumphant, I'd want to make sure that
>all the more subtle features requiring Internet access from the
>router-as-WAP will work when the WAN/Internet port is not used for the
>connection to the main LAN. For example:> Does the router-as-WAP have the correct date+time? (Or can it not
>communicate with a time server?)The answer is yes to both questions. You have access to the NTP screen and the ability to choose your time server. My RAX80 has been keeping the correct time in AP mode.
> Does a non-manual firmware update still work? (Or can it not
>communicate with a firmware-update server?)Yes, I have updated the firmware before a few times manually in AP mode.
> [...] my testing showed that AP mode turns all of the ports into LAN
> ports so it doesn't matter which one you use. [...]>How thorough was your testing?
Pretty thorough. I tested the Internet port as well as three different LAN ports without LAG turned on, and then LAG turned on. It seemed to be that when AP mode is on, there is no difference in the firmware as to what the ports do. They are all LAN ports.
>Does this scheme actually improve the speed?
A big misconception is that Link AggreGation will improve speed. That's not the point. If you aggregate two gigabit Ethernet ports, you don't magically get 2 gigabits of potential top speed. What you do get is 2 gigabits of total throughput. In my house, I have Comcast gigabit Ethernet, and in my market, gigabit is now advertised as 1.2 gigabits per second which is exactly the potential top speed for a single Wifi6 (802.11ax) connection. But Comcast regularly over-provisioned the speed for the customers so a 300 mbit/sec customer often sees speeds from 350-450 in certain markets on Speedtest.com. The Comcast XB7 cable model has a 2.5 multi-gig port and if you use wired ethernet, you can get speeds up to 1.4 gb/sec. I use a Unifi UDM-Pro, Unifi USW-24 Pro switch and a Unifi Aggregation switch, so my household Ethernet backbone is now 10 gb/sec.
But unlike the RAX120, RAX200 and the new RAXE500, the RAX80 doesn't have a multi-gig port. So if you use LAG back to my USW-24, what you are creating is a throughput highway that can handle twice as much throughput, but the top speed is still one gigabit. So if you have someone in your house wirelessly streaming a movie, someone else playing a PS5 online game, someone else downloading a file from their work VPN, etc, link aggregation means you are less likely to run into traffic jams and slowdowns if all of those connectioins add up to greater than 1 gigabit/sec but less than 2 gigabits/sec (and assuming your link to the outside world is capable of greater than 1 gig). Only the RAX120, RAX200 and RAXE500 can do a single data stream faster than 1 gig.
One of the other reasons to support LAG on the WAN side in normal router mode is that there are cable modems that do support LAG. Netgear makes one and so does Motorola. There may well be others.
Strangley, the RAX120 has a 1/2.5/5 multi-gig port while the higher end RAX200 and the new RAXE500 only have 1/2.5 multi-gig ports. Perhaps the 5 multi-gig port ended up being not realistic for the modem to be able to saturate completely. Or Netgear may have been cheap here....who knows? But in my testing, even with the two Wifi6 devices in the house (iPhone 11 and 12), I've never seen better than 750 mbit/sec on a Speedtest which correlates that Wifi specified top speeds almost never end up matching real world performance.