XGS1210-12 Link Aggregation

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @PeterUK

Our LAG function is load sharing and redundancy,
do not support load balancing.

Kreiszahl

Bought the NAS542 with the advertised promise of LAG. In words: GAIN speeds... not as described here: redundancy of speed...

Later bought the XGS1210-12 which advertised to be a fitting counterpart. Also GAINING speed when using LAG, not making speed redundant...

Yet waking up to realise: Properbly bought 2 devices I didn't need for beeing promised to have future advantages, which seem to be a big fat marketing hoax and actually abuse of technically fixed terms...

Feels like beeing frauded and ripped off...
Any thoughs on this?

https://support.zyxel.eu/hc/de/requests/291168

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @Kreiszahl,

Welcome to Zyxel community!

Link aggregation is to increase the available bandwidth between network devices.

The switch will hash the incoming traffic based on MAC address and/or ip address to do load sharing. If there has two users are sending files to NAS, they can both have full throughput/bandwidth per link since switch will forward the packets to different link due to different source MAC address.

However, one traffic flow goes one physical port and the maximum speed on one physical port is 1Gbps, so the maximum speed you see on the screen when sending the files will still be 1 Gbps.

And link aggregation also provide redundancy to prevent one link is down for some reason and you may keep using the NAS service.

SinisterPisces

Zyxel_Melen said:

Hi @PeterUK,

LAG also hash the traffic.
XGS1210 has these three LAG algorithm. Please refer the following image.


Hope it helps.

Hello!

A question about the hash policy support: The quoted part of the manual is using MAC addresses only. That would be a Layer2 hash policy on the Linux client machine hooked up to the switch.

Does the switch support Layer3 hashing (use of IP address), which would enable using a Layer2+3 hash policy in Linux?

Thanks!

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @SinisterPisces,

XGS1250/1210 only supports the MAC address hash policy.

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @SinisterPisces,

Thanks for asking about the hashing policy. Since XGS1250/1210 are entry-level switches, the MAC hashing policy should fulfill most of the user's requirements. Due to the home user's client mostly use one IP bind one MAC and transmit with Server/NAS by one to one, so IP hash and MAC hash may get the same result.

Could you share your scenario and why you need the IP hashing policy with us?

Don_Mag

I wanted to buy XGS1210-12. Looks like it has exactly what I need. I have a Synology with 2 x 1Gbps (support link aggregation). I wanted to connect exactly as here: 



Desktop computer to the 2.5 Gbps port (I have a motherboard in this standard).

What will be the maximum transfer between these devices? 1Gbps or 2Gbps?

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @Don_Mag,

Welcome to the Zyxel community!
It will be 1Gbps since the link aggregation only increase the available bandwidth. For more information, you could reference the below-quote explanation:

Zyxel_Melen said:

Link aggregation is to increase the available bandwidth between network devices.

The switch will hash the incoming traffic based on MAC address and/or ip address to do load sharing. If there has two users are sending files to NAS, they can both have full throughput/bandwidth per link since switch will forward the packets to different link due to different source MAC address.

However, one traffic flow goes one physical port and the maximum speed on one physical port is 1Gbps, so the maximum speed you see on the screen when sending the files will still be 1 Gbps.

And link aggregation also provide redundancy to prevent one link is down for some reason and you may keep using the NAS service.

Don_Mag

But that's misleading in my opinion! 

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @Don_Mag,

The advantage of Link Aggregation is load sharing and redundancy.

If you have two devices that are sending data to your NAS, the Link Aggregation allows both devices to have 1Gbps bandwidth.

However, if there's only one device, the maximum bandwidth is still 1Gbps.
This is because the switch will hash the incoming traffic based on the MAC address to do load sharing.