Bonding

[Goosemaster]

For the first few days of school here @ college, the network worked perfectly, but now that we are in session, it has become slower then may cable At home. Considering we have a t3, it is easy to nderstand the amount of traffic the school uses for academic...morpheus ...cough...reasons. Anyways, I am getting a p200mmx and could possibly get a mobo for an old p3 700e I have laying around. Presently, I am interested in bonding two connections from the outlet into the machine, then to my main pc. As far as i know, the school has gigabit setup, with routers sending 100Mmbps to each ip. Additionally, I think they have cat5e wiring. Regardless, I would like to setup load-balancing so that I can get my work done quickly. Downloading quickly isn't something bad either=)

A few options I have seen include Smoothwall and Fressco. They seem to route traffic, but I'm not sure if they can handle load-balancing. I am basically unfamiliar with Linux, but if it turns out to be the adaquate solution, please recommend a version of the OS that has progs for webserving(apache?), routing, and load-balancing so that I can use it as a gateway. I really do not want to run a webserver on my main pc, soon to be an AthlonXP 1800(Probably Friday of this week), because I will only use it for vpn services so I can access my pc from abroad etc and maybe host a page or too. Help with bypassinfg the school firewall for a webpage would be helpful as well.

I know it seems like a lot, but I know there are a lot of smart people in here, and I am a toatl novice when it comes to linux. The ideal would be to have the linux box setup, probably with the 700p3 or p200, serving everything, but for me to make the webpages on the pc, and send them to the box. Basically like dealing with any webserver, except a linux one.

Thanks peeps

 

[Garion]

If you have a 100Mb/s LAN connection, you're already running faster than the 45Mb/s of your school's T3. You probably won't get much more throughput with bonded NICS.

The way you MIGHT get better performance is if your school is doing some kind of bandwidth limiting - IE, 128K upload cap or something. In that case, you might look for some NICS that do teaming - I know that Intels do so quite nicely. They call it "AFT". Might do some digging on their website to find some details.

- G

 

[Goosemaster]

Wouldn't the routter then address me as two computers and as two users then. Basically, I woud get twicw as much right?

I used to get about a few megs persecond...then about 700KB/s....and now about 180. Basically, wouldn't it have the same effect as a download acceleartor, I mostly want the boost for loading pages. The ping is horrible here with the load the school as a whole puts on it.
Wouldn't any two NICs work anyways with the right software.


Thanks.

 

[spidey07]

sounds like the T3 is pretty full.

 

[Goosemaster]

yeah.

Like I said, everyone uses Morpheus and other crap(Not Like I excuse myself from guilt😉)
I just want surfing to be quick, and in case i need to download something, have it work quickly.


Personally I am not very familiar with the properties of commercial lines, but wouldn't this techniques send two data packet requests to the line for half the data, in essence making general activity quicker. I have the computer sitting there so I was interested in trying this.

Also, what should i use for a werserver. Should I go the Linux route or deal with win2k server and it's many holes? And what is the easiest way to get past the firewall for hosting a webpage. I expect minimal bandwidth usage for the page and any vpn'ing I do.

 

[spidey07]

whoa there nelly.

ok, what are you trying to accomplish? here's what i've heard -

1) increase internet bandwidth - can't do much here
2) run web server - lots of options. linux/apache good choice, 2K/IIS decent choice if you lock it down.
3) allow your web server to be accessed from the internet - hmmm, not likely unless your school allows this sort of thing.
4) VPN into your school PC - depends on if your school allows this, not likely

so maybe we can help with number 2?

 

[Garion]

Here's what's happening:

Think of a network as a pipe. Your 100BaseT LAN connection is a 2" pipe and the school's 45Mb/s T3 is a 1" pipe. When you try to connect ONE 2" pipe to a 1" pipe, you're going to loose some capacity. Now take thousands of 2" pipes and try and route them all into a 1" pipe. Performance will degrade significantly.

At this point, your Internet connectivity at 180Kb/s is using a tiny amount of the 100Mb/s (1000000Kb/s). You are not limited by the bandwidth at your NIC, you are limited by the amount of traffic going to/from the Internet across the T3. Adding another NIC really won't get you anything since they are designed to maximized the LAN access and don't help across the WAN.

NIC "Teaming" was designed to be used in servers that were pushing a single NIC too hard across the LAN and another needed to be added to share the load on the LAN. To the network, it looks like a single 200Mb/s pipe to one IP. Your problem isn't at the LAN so this won't do you any good.

- G