Arch Linux

cyph3r

Member

Registered: 2012-01-13

Posts: 11

Can I bond wlan0 and usb0 network connections?

Hello,

So I have a lenovo u310 running arch linux. I frequently am in places where the wifi speed is terribly slow and I revert to usb tethering my smartphones 3G connection to the laptop. This appears as usb0 in ifconfig. And I was wondering if I can somehow bond these two connections (the wifi one -> wlan0 and the 3G tethered one -> usb0).
I know this can be done with regular ethernet connections but I read that because you get different ips in each connection (usb0, wlan0) you can't bond those. So it doesn't work on combining separate networks.
I figured I might as well ask here just in case anyone knows something more about this.

Cheers

Rexilion

Member

Registered: 2013-12-23

Posts: 784

Re: Can I bond wlan0 and usb0 network connections?

I don't think it's worth the effort to bond those. However, you can use route metrics to define a priority between interfaces which allows for seamless switching.

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cris9288

Member

Registered: 2013-01-07

Posts: 348

Re: Can I bond wlan0 and usb0 network connections?

I've been experimenting with bonding eth0 and wlan0 using netctl for a couple of weeks now. There's a good entry in the netctl wiki for it, and I don't see why it wouldn't work for two wireless interfaces... In my current setup my bonding interface bond0 get's an ip address via dhclient. The two slave interfaces must be set to not get an IP address or else it won't work. I imagine that you'll probably have to have two wpa_supplicant services running for each wireless interface to associate to your AP. I should also say that bonding doesn't work with dhcpcd.

It is a little buggy though - some applications don't like play nice with it. vpnc is the first that comes to mind. If I start vpnc, unplug the cable, and plug it back in (or stop vpn and then plug it back in) I lose my ability to reach any address, local or otherwise. VirtualBox is also a problem when using a bridged adapter - unplugging my cable causes me to lose my connection in my guest machine. I've also found roaming to be a pain in the ass, since I have to either manually write a new network block in my wpa_suplicant.conf file or use wpa_cli, which is almost worse. Finally, since the bonding profile is it's own profile and it probably always up, I've missed the ExecUpPost/ExecDownPre functionality that is handy for roaming. Those drawbacks aside, my ssh/ftp/samba/nfs connections do stay alive when I switch back and forth between connection types; which is what I wanted, but I'm just not sure it's worth it.

I say give it a shot though. Maybe you'll have better luck than I've had.