HELP! Problem with DSL Load-Sharing and Connectivity

[Perfection]

Alright, so here's the story. I'm the network administrator for my fraternity, which houses around 70 guys. Last term, due to the incompetence of our network people, we were running on a single DSL modem at like 640/540 or something of that nature.

I contacted Qwest (I had to choose DSL as there are no cable hookups in the closet) and got hooked up with three 1.5 Mbps DSL lines. We already had two Nexland 800Pro routers to help combine these connection and through "load-sharing" allow these to act as one Internet source.

However, I've had some major problems.

The largest problem that I've faced deals with AOL Instant Messenger. Being college guys, we all chat it up...all the time. The problem is that with load-sharing, people are frequently kicked off of AIM and then reconnect...only to be kicked off a few minutes later. I'm certain that this is due to the load-sharing and the movement of the connection between the external WAN connections. However, it is a major annoyance to be interrupted in conversations and such...and as it has been expressed to me...intolerable.

Furthermore, sometimes people have to click on a link multiple times before it will seem to go through...which I believe could be a DNS related problem...or somehow the computer sends information out one connection and then is transfered to the other WAN port...where it doesn't receive a signal back.

For a while, my temporary fix was to connect a DSL line to each of our two large switches. I was able to get redundancy thorugh the "stack" port or something like that. Howver, this segmented the logical network and split our workgroup (for file sharing ....etc.) in half....which is also unacceptable.

So right now, I have one 1.5 Mbps DSL connection powering an entire fraternity house. The connection is certainly slow...to say the least. The speed is unacceptable, but I have the other demands....and I don't have the $500 a month for a T1 connection. Is there another type of Internet feed that would work better.

Are better yet, is there some way that I can get these multiple connections to co-exist and allow us to do all the video streaming and chatting that we want to do...without our connections being interrupted at will?

One idea that was suggested to me by a friend was to purchase a low-quality computer and then put a bunch of NICs into it and run Linux...which apparently ( I don't know much about Linux) can essentially act as a router...where I could forward specific ports to specific internet connection. Thus, I would be able to forward all traffic on the ports that AIM frequents through only one of the set Internet connections....but I really don't know if this will work or how to go about doing it...so I'm lost in that regards. [Also, I tried to create static routes in the Nexland to do a similar "IP Forwarding" to the IP addresses of the AIM servers....but that didn't seem to be effective".

Okay, I'm sure by now you've seen the extent of my problem. It's a major hassle as I'm the only really technically related guy in the house and I don't know who to turn to. I'm unsure of what a professional company would do different from the many things and settings with the routers/modems that I've already tried.

Thanks SO much in advance for any ideas or links or help that you can provide. The 60 men of my fraternity would be extremely grateful, as this has been a major headache for both them and (especially) me since the Fall.

 

[gaidin123]

Heya,

First off, is it possible for your DSL provider to provide you with a single line with higher bandwidth? If so, I would look into getting something like that and running some flavor of linux with QoS built in. The Linksys WRT54GS with the sveasoft firmware will do decent QoS though I don't know how well it will handle 60+ users. A real linux box would be better with 2 NICs and QoS via iproute2 tools.

The other option you have on the cheap is to segment up your network so half (or a third) of your users use internet connection A, and the other half use connection B. You will lose some efficiency, but being college guys you probably will be using 100% of all connections all the time. I assume you're NATing everyone so give one group 192.168.0, another 192.168.1, etc. You lose the load balancing but you gain a working net connection. You will need one cable/DSL router per segment however, or a pretty crazy linux box.

Check and see what the fastest net connection you can get from local DSL providers is and also check with the cable company to see what they offer in terms of cable speeds and business class service. If you can, your life will be easier with just one net connection.

Check out http://www.lartc.org/ for the linux advanced routing and traffic control howto. Pretty much every linux out there that comes set up with QoS (ie the sveasoft firmware from above) bases their configuration on the "wondershaper" script from here.

Gaidin

 

[Perfection]

Thanks for the info. But would the setup you talked about where we would segment the network with different DSL connections, would that allow everyone in the house to be able to see each other under "Workgroup" in Windows? I only ask this because when I tried doing something similar to this, the result with the Internet connection was quite good, but some people weren't visible/connected on the local network with others....and in our setup and use of network, everyone has to be able to access everyone elses computer from the "My Network Places" --> View Workgroup Computers ....in XP.

So do companies regularly offer DSL speeds of higher than 1.5 Mbps...cause I was unaware that speeds got that much higher than that. Would cable to the trick. The reason I ask that is because although cable is currently not a feasible option, it will be next fall.

But still, I'm still unsure about how to solve my problems while load balancing....or if it is even possible to load balance and have a consistant AIM connection, for example.

Thanks for any help. I really do appreciate it.

 

[DaiShan]

I have 3mbit DSL to provide a measure of redundancy on my network. You could set up a windows domain and load balance that way...

 

[gaidin123]

With the segmented network, and both segments behind NAT boxes you would not be able to do normal windows file sharing between the two halves. Well, you might be able to do it if you had a large switch that everything plugged in to, then had both routers uplink from that switch, set half the computers to use one gateway and half to the other, and if you had the subnet mask set to something like 255.255.254.0 and used IPs like 192.168.0.x and 192.168.1.x.

That would place all machines in 192.168.0.x and 192.168.1.x into the same subnet which is probably what Windows likes to place things in the Network Places. Having everyone place themselves into the same workgroup would probably make it cleaner too.

With the subnet mask set per above the machines shouldn't try to route local traffic through the NAT boxes. It's a kind of cracked out idea but you kinda have a cracked out network

And yes, as mentioned you should be able to find 3Mbit DSL connections, as least on the downstream side. Some providers, such as cyberonic.com (no, not affiliated in the least) resell a 6Mbit down/768Kbit up DSL for $70/month. Getting 1 or 2 of those lines along with some QoS should be more than enough for a zippy network and wouldn't be that expensive.

So you have 2 big switches that are uplinked together right now? If you get 2 DSL lines that you each plug into a cable/dsl router and try to get the people on one switch to use the connection that's plugged in to the same switch and use all the settings mentioned above things *should* work. Please try it before spending any more money.

If you pull this off I'd love to hear/see the setup.

Gaidin

Edit:Uh if you are using DHCP you can only have 1 DHCP server per segment on your network. You either need to set up a custom DHCP server or set up static IPs for everyone.

Edit2: Anything with an inconsistent network connection like IM would probably have issues with your current setup. Unless the program sends keepalives the load balancers probably kill the connections at some point. Things like web browsing and file transfers probably work fine though (but slow) right?

 

[akk142]

Hey man, I'm the network admin for my fraternity too. I'm trying to do the EXACT same thing for about 50 people, but I haven't tried it yet. However, I have researched it and am pretty good with networks.

Other problems I've heard of are SMTP (email), and FTP. The SMTP works if you put the IP of the mail servers instead of the hostname. The error lies in the DNS lookup.

My email is akk142@psu.edu and my AIM name is PSUKarch.

Maybe we can figure this all out.

-andy karch