The Ultimate Campus Network! - A Single Ethernet Port Multi-Link Carrier Aggregation Solution for Campus Networks

Preface

As a new university student, I found the campus network to be quite unsatisfactory. Not only does each dorm room have only one Ethernet port for wired PPPoE dial-up, but each user is also limited to approximately 40 Mbps. This led to the idea of using a soft router to achieve single-port multi-session dial-up and carrier aggregation, thereby stacking broadband speeds.

Note: This tutorial is only suitable for campus network environments that support single-port multi-session dial-up. If your environment differs, do not follow this guide.
If your campus network supports multiple separate dial-up sessions on different ports but you still want to achieve this functionality, please refer to this tutorial.

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Hardware / Environment Requirements

• A campus network interface that supports single-port multi-PPPoE session dial-up
• A soft router running X-wrt with at least two RJ-45 Ethernet ports

• A switch of any type

  Note: The original OpenWrt seems unable to configure Xwan, so you must choose X-wrt which is based on OpenWrt.

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Resource Download

• X-wrt Official Download Page

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1. Enable Xwan

• Log into the LuCI WebUI and navigate to Network --> Xwan
• Check the Enable box

• In the Xwan Number field below, set the number of broadband connections you want to aggregate

  The author aggregated four campus broadband lines (theirs and their roommates'), so entered 4.

• Under Internet Protocol, select the protocol you need

  The author chose IPv4 and IPv6 here.

• Click Save & Apply

  Note: For Xwan, the system automatically configures the necessary firewall rules and load balancing; no manual configuration is required.

2. Configure PPPoE Dial-up

• Navigate to Network --> Interfaces
  At this point, you should see one main wan line and several sub-lines: Xwan01, Xwan02, Xwan03, Xwan04 (depending on the number you set).
• Set the corresponding dial-up username and password for each line.
• Click Save & Apply after configuring each.
  If configured correctly, all lines should be able to dial up normally.
  

  

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Verification and Testing

• Use multi-threaded speed testing software or multi-threaded downloaders for verification. If the obtained speed is the aggregated total, the configuration is successful.
  

  

  
  The author aggregated four 40 Mbps lines, so a result of 147.70 Mbps is expected.

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Afterword

The author is not a professional networking engineer. If there are any omissions or errors, experts are welcome to point them out!