HI all,

First post on the forum, and my first proper project on the Paspberry Pi, so sorry if this is in the wrong place.

I am trying to turn my Pi in to a 3G/4G Bonding router. I have been researching and trying this for a week or so now. The basic plan is to have up to 6 ZTE MF823 USB dongles. The Pi would then bond them together in to bond0. It would then forward traffic on eth0 (my internal network) to the bond. Having the bond on a mode to allow for maximum bandwidth & redundancy.

I started with setting up my Pi as a router. It took me some time and a lot of problems but I have managed to use iptables to forward traffic from eth0 to usb0, and this works perfectly.

I have set up isc-dhcp-server on my Pi and added the IP range for the local subnet. So I have proven that my Pi works as a router, with one internet source.

The problem I am getting starts with plugging in two of the dongles. They both go in separate ports on the PI but both get the same IP (192.168.0.194) and the same MAC address. But they are on different interfaces, usb0 + usb1. But when on the 192.168.0.1 page the information about the dongle says that it has got a public ip with in it. I have tried setting usb0 & usb1 to dhcp and static, on dhcp they both get the same 192.168.0.194 address. On static they wont actually connect to the internet.

I would like to also add the ability to access all of the USB modems control page, but they all come though on 192.168.0.1, can I change this to work in a sequensual order? 192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2, 192.168.0.3 ….

So my question/request is for a bit of guidance on setting up the bond. I have followed some guides that talk you though setting up the bond but have had no luck, I currently am getting the error message “Failed to enslave usb0 to bond0, Is bond0 ready and a bonding interface?” when I start networking.

I have the follow setup;

Raspberry Pi B+
Latest Raspbian
LTE MF823 X 2
1 – 4 USB hub, used just to allow space for both dongle to plug in, one plugs into that and the other into the Pi.

My /etc/network/interfaces looks like



Iptables walk though - https://www.debian-administration.or...Debian_gateway

I then chmod 755 and executed it as well as saved in if-up.d. I swapped the eth1 for usb0 to test it, and then I have changed it to bond0 for it to pass that though.

Router walk though (DHCP setup ) - http://www.g7smy.co.uk/?p=505
A bonding walk though - http://www.linuxhorizon.ro/bonding.html
A bonding walk though - http://askubuntu.com/questions/53499...tions-into-one


I have tried numerous walk thoughts for bonding but all seem to come up short.

My problems;

- USB Modems not getting there own IP’s and MAC address
- Bond not starting/set up correctly

If any one has any ideas or solutions i would love to hear them.

Many thanks.
Elliott

Normally with bonding you do not give the slave devices ip addresses. You don't even need to auto them.

Example:

Also make sure your module is loaded. If you run:

You should get something like:

Hi Nmo,

Thanks for this, i have down that now but i am still getting the same error when starting the network, "Failed to enslave usb0 to bond0, Is bond0 ready and a bonding interface?" - it also comes up with usb1. When i run lsmod | grep bond i get

Bonding 98225 0

Is it because I'm trying to bond usb interfaces? Though i have read that that has been done before.

Cheers

You could try to install ifenslave. I have never bonded usb interfaces only Ethernet. But it appears to me after doing some searching. That with usb some people build the bond interface and then do ifenslave bond0 usb0 usb1

I'm not sure if that would help. I don't have a configuration similar to test with.

I have got ifenslave installed but know sure if it is configured correctly. have found so many different ways of doing it and even some saying there isn't any real configuration on the ifenslave end.

Yes i am trying to bond usb0 & usb1 and then using eth0 as the pan facing port, so that isn't part of the bond.

I'm a little worried this won't work. Your usb0 and 1 devices are 3/4g so that would imply they are another companies wireless device. In order to bond those I think you would have to have bonding support on your wireless providers side. You can't just pick an ip, etc. you could try dhcp on the bond0 instead of static but if the wireless company doesn't support you bonding it won't work.

Is that how it works. From my understanding the USB dongle is just a 4G USB Modem so i would have thought that the computer would register it as a modem.