Can an engineer or developer from TP-L chime in here and give out some high-level details as to what sort of load balancing algorithm is used by this managed switch since LACP isn't supported? It would be especially useful in determining whether or not this feature would potentially benefit or be detrimental to my internal LAN. If static LAG might negatively impact my network, I can simply disable it. From testing so far, it doesn't seem to have a negative impact.
The switch seems to indicate packets are flowing across all 3 ports in a distributed manner. My main concern is whether or not the packets have the potential to be delivered out-of-order by the TP-L managed switch, which would cause problems.
The Router config page states the following about its load balancing algorithm:
- Balances outgoing traffic across the active ports based on hashed protocol header information and accepts incoming traffic from any active port. This is a static setup and does not negotiate aggregation with the peer or exchange frames to monitor the link. The hash includes the Ethernet source and destination address, and, if available, the VLAN tag, and the IP source and destination address.
So it appears as though the router (running OPNsense) is doing its job, distributing packets across the 3 ports I've set up for LAG on the TP-L switch. I'm assuming the switch really isn't doing much of anything, maybe perhaps just sending/receiving packets as it normally would. Is the LAG config on the switch even necessary?
Here's a screenshot, with the 3 ports I've set up in a LAG configuration circled in RED.