All Teltonika routers feature a load balancing mechanism that allows for the distribution of WAN traffic to the Internet among different interfaces. In all models equipped with a single 3G or LTE modem, that is, all except the RUTX12, this mechanism typically operates between the mobile interface and the RJ45 WAN interface or the WiFi interface.
The RUTX12 is the only model that features two LTE CAT6 modems up to 300Mbps, allowing the router to balance Internet traffic between these two modems. In this article, we explain how this load balancing mechanism works, what speed improvements you can expect from it, and which ones you cannot.
Load balancing vs Bonding
In Internet access devices, we have two mechanisms or ways to increase speed through two or more simultaneous links or connections: load balancing and bonding. We must clarify that all Teltonika routers offer Load Balancing and not Bonding.
The load balancing mechanism consists of distributing Internet traffic by splitting the established sessions/connections among the different available outgoing interfaces. In the following figure, we have 4 terminals, each with 10 connections/sessions. If we configure a 50%-50% split between both outgoing interfaces, the router will route 20 connections through one interface and 20 connections through the other.
It is important to emphasize that a connection is a TCP/UDP session between an IP and a source port and an IP and a destination port. Thus, we can have several sessions from a single terminal or source IP because they point to different destination IPs or even to different ports on the same destination IP (for example, an FTP session and a remote control session). Consequently, we can significantly improve the Internet connection speed from a single terminal depending on the generated traffic. However, the most suitable scenario is for the simultaneous connection of several terminals to the Internet.
It is also important to emphasize that traffic distribution is based on the number of connections and not on the throughput or bandwidth consumed among all connections. Therefore, we will never have the same throughput on both Internet connections.
In the RUTX12, we can approximately estimate an aggregated throughput as the sum of the throughputs of both modems, less a 15% deduction due to the internal processes of the router.
In contrast, the bonding mechanism consists of aggregating multiple connections into a single connection. This is why the bonding mechanism operates between two endpoints (point to point). One endpoint will always be our router, and the other would need to be, for example, a VPN router that supports bonding or some other aggregation device. From this endpoint, we could then connect to the Internet or other services.
The bonding mechanism does allow for traffic to be distributed at all times based on the throughput but has the drawback of requiring an infrastructure capable of supporting bonding on the central side, which is not common except in specific connections enabled for this purpose.
What is load balancing for and what is it not for?
Based on the previous description, we can define in which scenarios load balancing can be useful and in which others it won’t provide any improvement.
Improvement scenarios
- Access to the Internet from multiple devices: computer networks, automated networks, WiFi access in public places or buses, etc.
- Differentiated access to the Internet: corporate use vs public hotspot
- Simultaneous connections from the same terminal (FTP, remote access, software updates, etc.)
Scenarios of no improvement
- Streaming of a single video stream with high bandwidth consumption
- Unique connection with a high flow (FTP, remote access, software updates, etc.)
You can expand this information in this wiki article from Teltonika.
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