How to test my summational bandwidth of multiple WAN links

The Load-Balance routers have more than one WAN port, you could use two or more WAN links to create an enhanced bandwidth output. You may ask: How do I test whether the bandwidth is enhanced or not? For example, you have two 4M ADSL lines and want to test if they could generate a total 8M speed , how to do that?

www.speedtest.net will give you an answer.

Here we take TL-ER5120 as example:

Step 1 Set up the WAN connections, in this example, we use two 4M ADSL for WAN links, here is the status page of the TL-ER5120:

Step 2 Open the “Advanced”----“Load Balance”----“Configuration”, make sure NO option is checked:

1. Why should I disable the “Application Optimized Routing”?

Use the Application Optimized Routing only when you need a fixed and stable single WAN service, many websites require this kind of WAN connection like https connection which some e-business or bank websites use to ensure security.

2. Why should I disable the “Bandwidth Based Balance Routing”?

Use the Bandwidth Based Balance Routing only when bandwidth of different WAN links vary widely. If different WAN links have similar bandwidth or even equal numbers like 1:1, Bandwidth Based Balance Routing will not show you an aggregation result.

Step 3 Open your web-browser and type www.speedtest.net in the address bar, click “Begin Test” to test your speed:

Step 4 You can see two 4M ADSL lines have been bounded into one 8M channel

Note:

1. Other download activity may shows speed of only one WAN port, that’s because different applications have different principles, all single-thread applications use only one channel for data transferring, like FTP download, IE download and many other applications. Speed of these applications will never show summed speed of all WAN links. Here is a picture of IE download in the example above, showing only one WAN speed:

2. Besides of the www.speedtest.net, multi-threads application or several single-thread applications could also achieve the expected result. The more threads, the better.