Load balance (both ethernet and wifi sources)

[leo_1988]

hi there, I’m trying to setup pfsense(load balance) to my old pc.
I hooked up 2 ethernet cards and 1 wireless and installed pfsense.
The two internet sources are my 20mbps vdsl connection and my friends 8mbps adsl.
Mine (20mbps vdsl) is local so  works fine.
Now the problem is that I need the 8mbps to be wirelessly connected to pfsense pc  because the connection is not possible through ethernet (its 1 building away).
There is picture here expaining what I’m trying to do.
the question is,  is it possible? And how ?

[luckman212]

maybe something like this, connect it as a wireless "client" and then feed the ethernet cable to your pfsense as  a 2nd wan

[chris4916]

As suggested by luckman212, you can connect any wifi router to your PC and configure this router as "wifi client" connecting to your "ADSL via Wifi" access.
From pfSense, it will be seen as LAN (over ethernet).

This said, do not expect any magic from load balancing.
With such configuration, you will not get 28 Mb/s but 20 Mbps +, 8 Mbps if there is another connection requirement.
e.g. you may use 20 Mbps for HTTP and 8 Mbps for… whatever like FTP or another HTTP for another client (assuming you don't have http proxy inside)

[leo_1988]

So I will need external equipment to do this.
Also i really thought it’s going to be the sum of two lines (28mbps)… isn’t any other way to do this? I’m sure I saw some YouTube videos with this feature!

[Derelict]

I’m sure I saw some YouTube videos with this feature!

No, you probably didn't.  Not that the youtube demonstrator didn't erroneously think and say that was what was happening.

The only way I know of to combine multiple circuits into a single, larger pipe is Multi-Link PPP.

Everything else (load sharing, load balancing, LACP, etc) are just different methods of sending certain connections over one circuit and others over another.

[chris4916]

@leo_1988:

Also i really thought it’s going to be the sum of two lines (28mbps)… isn’t any other way to do this? I’m sure I saw some YouTube videos with this feature!

28 = 20 + 8
I can't deny this  ;D

What must be understood is that if you open one single connection from your device to one single external server, the max throughput will be the one allowed by the gateway used by THIS unique connection. There is no aggregation here.

As a result, if you have multiple parallel protocols, one using one gateway and the other using the other gateway, benefit will be that total throughput may reach 28 Mbps. So there is some potential benefit but only if having the 2 connections on same gateway would have faced bottleneck.