Anyway to support two ISP in the same time?

kelvin1704

Senior member
Mar 21, 2001
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Our company is currently sourcing for a contigency plan. We have one unrealiable ISP and would wish to add another ISP as contigency.

I am thinking about a load balancing hardware but i have no idea what is actually out there and what it would cost.

Cost is an issue to us. Please comment. Thanks
 

Alptraum

Golden Member
Sep 18, 2002
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If your current is unreliable I would just find a relaiable one. Is that not an option for some reason?
 

Vegito

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 1999
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It's call BGP.

BGP v4 routing

You need to goto arin and get an AS #, AS # is 500 a year http://www.arin.net/

ie if you have AS 20000 which tells the world how to reach you.
ie 1 ISP is 192.168.10.0/24 (24 ie 255.255.255.0)
2nd isp is 192.168.20.0/24

Arin might need a whole class C to route but I did it with a /29 and you dont need a big class for ur second line.

You will need any router with 128mb ram to carry all the routes.. ie cisco 3640 (what I got) with 128mb ram, dual t1 wic cards

Basically if your ip is 192.168.10.x - 254 and it dies, you lose internet connection

If you have bgp and a second set of ip, BGP routing tells the world that to get to your netork 192.168.10.0, you can get to it from ISP1 which next hop is x.x.x.x or ISP 2 which is connected to you via 192.168.20.0. Get it ?

To reach your 192.168.10.0/24 subnet, you now have 2 routes to go in and out. If you dont want to use BGP there are other ways ie those bonding devices but with those, you'll need to setup round robin dns ie say ur mail is 192.168.10.10, you'll need dns for that entry and a 192.168.20.10 entry to map to the same address..

hope this helps, bgp is much better to do but if you route it wrong, you may black hole a chunk of internet
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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It would depend entirely on what your needs are and what type of service you're looking for.

True load balancing can only really be done with two or more connections to the same ISP.

If you are only using the connection to get Internet access and not running any servers, a "backup" connection can be relatively easy to set up, with one line from each provider. It could be done with a simple dialup line through a firewall, or even connected through a router that supports both the backup dialup and your primary connection. Or you could use a DSL line or ISDN line for backup of a T1 line. You would need to be using Network Address Translation (NAT). When the primary service goes down, your router or firewall would initiate the backup connection, and begin using whatever IP address is assigned to that connection. The NAT configuration would allow your computers to continue to work through the backup connection, without needing to reconfigure every machine to use a different IP address.

If however you are running servers, then in order to use a "backup" it's a little harder. Unless you want to always be updating DNS records when your service goes down, your servers always need to be using the same IP addresses. In general, if you have one ISP, you'll have been assigned a block of IP's to use on your network. Those IP's cannot be (contractually) routed through any other ISP, so they can't be used as part of a "backup" connection; technically they can be, but it's extremely unlikely that either ISP would be willing to set that up. In this case, you would need to apply to ARIN to get a block of IP addresses assigned to your company. They only assign a Class C block as the smallest group, which is 256 addresses (254 usable). Once you get the IP block, you would work with your two providers to set up your connections so that normally those IPs are routed through your primary service, but if that goes down, your secondary connection is activated and immediately routed through the secondary ISP, and the primary ISP must stop routing them until the service comes back up.

If you wish to have a "multi-homed" connection, you will also need your own block of IPs from ARIN. In this case, you would have two connections active, one from each ISP, at all times. Both would actively route the IP block you have; other routers and servers on the Internet would receive both routes as possible paths to reach your network, and the software in the routers will choose the best path based on criteria their owners decide (such as whether one path goes through a link that they have to pay per-megabit, or through a path that they have unlimited bandwidth usage on). Your router will receive incoming traffic over both connections, and when your computers send traffic out, your router will make the same choices about which path to use. If one connection were to go down, that ISP would stop advertising itself as an active route for your IPs, while the other would continue working as it had. For a short time, some routers on the Internet would continue to see the route to the "down" service as usable, which will result in data loss, but updates propagate pretty quickly, so the lost data should be short-lived.

A very good book that will help you make decisions on what types of services you need is called "Getting Connected" from O'Reilly. It explains all of the available Internet services, how they're set up, and helps you through the process of ordering it.

You'll also need to contact your ISP to determine what possibilities you have, and you'll need to contact other ISPs to get pricing and availability of backup or multi-homing services. Many ISPs won't provide BGP services to "small business" connections or allow you to use your own IP block; BGP is the protocol used to allow your to use your own IP block from ARIN through two different ISPs -- it tells the routers at both ISPs that that particular IP block belongs to your router. Many also simply don't have a system setup that allows "backup" service, which would only be charged based on how often you use it, as most connections are intended to be "always on", such as DSL and T1 service; ISDN service is a very common backup solution, as you're only charged a basic fee for the line, and then charged based on how much you use it.

It would be a very good idea to hire a network consultant to help you set up this stuff, if you're unsure what you're doing.
 

Vegito

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 1999
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I use sprint and wcom and verizon, i got a block c from sprint and a /29 from wcom and a /29 from verizon also. WCom was very friendly and quick but that was a while back.. now.. who knows..
 

kelvin1704

Senior member
Mar 21, 2001
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I have did some research. Basically, there's another easier way for all this. Basiically I would just get a SDSL as my main line.. and then from the same ISP, i would get a ISDN line as backup. So my line would have a backup if the lines goes down.

Unless my ISP goes down completly.. then that's a different story. Anyway, if this ISP does goes down, its just means most others will too as all other rely on its backbone.
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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You made it sound like the ISP was unreliable, not just your current connection. A different connection won't make your ISP more reliable, and having a backup through the same ISP may not help.

If you can, try to get the ISDN line to go through a different central office with the phone company than the SDSL line passes through. That way if the SDSL CO has a problem with any of their trunk lines, it won't affect your ISDN line hopefully. Might cost more money to do it that way though, since the ISDN line would need to be longer to reach another CO.

How do "all other" ISPs go through your ISP? Even if you had MCI/Worldcom as your ISP, the "user service" portion is probably a separate network, connecting to their backbone the same way other ISPs connect to it (so that changes to their user network don't adversely affect the backbone). Not sure about that of course. But still, not all ISPs use any one backbone. The largest are multihomed through many backbone providers, so if one provider goes down, performance will go down, but the largest sites may still be working as they'll also have different providers for multi-homed service.

The local point of presence could go down entirely, as well; most ISPs only have one or two outbound connections from a PoP site, which usually go through the same central office. If that CO goes down or loses a trunk line, both the outbound paths go down; or if physical damage causes one line to break, it'll probably break all of them. This is a reason to have your ISDN line not only go to a different central office, but also to a different PoP site with your ISP, if possible. Since ISDN is a dialup connection, you should be able to have them give you an access number that connects you to an ISDN network access point that's not in the same site as your SDSL line connects to; it might be a long distance call, but if it means you get net access when your normal PoP site is down, it can be worth it.
 

DarkWarrior2

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
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You can also try Fatpipe, I don't know much about it except that it is a linux based hardware solution, and supports combining multiple isp "pipes" to you, and has an automatic failover function. It worked for one of our clients at my previous job. I heard it was quite pricey, though- don't know how that has changed.

www.fatpipeinc.com

Hope that helps...

Edit: The products to check out are Xtreme and/or Superstream.
 

buleyb

Golden Member
Aug 12, 2002
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Or setup a linux box to load balance or fault protect the lines. You get each line from an ISP, get a linux box with 2 NICs, configure up a load balancing system, and voila. Its what we use here, and it's helped a lot.

If you are simply getting another connection in case your current ISP is having a problem, some ISPs will give better rates if its only a backup line (meaning you'll probably pay by the minute or by the Mbits or something, but they don't charge you more than maybe $15 a month to keep the service available).