load balancing a 200mb and a 100mb

[jaysawatzki]

hello, I wanted to load balance a 200mb and a 100mb. I was wondering how sophisticated load balancing is. weather the load balancing will load balance games for example. I am building a nice gaming computer and I was going to have secondlife running in the background while I play other games online. I was wondering if load balancing will load balance secondlife with the 100mb while I play another game with the 200mb, and how the prioritizing works for those. for example if the game running on the main screen will run the faster internet speed, because it is the highest priority for the cpu's.

also during downloading while using load balancing, does the second internet connection wait to activate until the faster internet connection is at a slower downloading speed then the slower internet connection.

and is load balancing smart enough to know speeds, the 100mb is half the speed of the 200mb speed, so does it know when to work. or is load balancing more unsophisticated, where the two internet connection "should" be at the same speed, because they take even turns as if the internet connections are the same speed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

There are different forms of load-balancing.

I will speak as to my experiences, using Shibby Tomato 140-MultiWAN on an Asus AC68R router.

First of all, you have to set up the VLANs on the router, and then increase the WAN count, which allows connecting multiple WANs.

Then, you configure each WAN, and if you are doing weighted round-robin load-balancing, there is a number, 1-250, to allocate the "share" of the load-balancing, that gets allocated to each connection.

I was connecting a 10Mbit Comcast connection, and a 50Mbit FIOS connection. So, I put in 10 and 50, for the relative shares.

There is also "policy-based routing", which you can specify traffic patterns (like a firewall), but instead of a pass/drop rule, you specify which WAN port from which the traffic leaves the router. So, you could look up the IPs or domain names of the game server(s), and add them, and specify that all connections to one game go through one WAN, and the other game goes through the other WAN, but downloads alternate connections to spread the load out.

I didn't have much luck, getting the policy-based routing to actually take effect, for some reason. The firmware (the Multi-WAN feature especially) is still in development.

 

[jaysawatzki]

great, that's good to hear that at least some load balancing is sophisticated enough to input the speed. that's also interesting to hear about the other technologies, that allow input of which server is allowed on which connection

searching more in depth, I have found that windows operating systems built in load balancing software collects data for analyzing server speed.

so the windows operating system already does what I was asking about.

"With multiple-host load balancing, incoming client requests are distributed among all cluster hosts, and a load percentage can be specified for each host. Load percentages allow hosts with higher capacity to receive a larger fraction of the total client load. Single-host load balancing directs all client requests to the host with highest handling priority. The handling priority essentially overrides the host priority for the port range and allows different hosts to individually handle all client traffic for specific server applications."

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742455.aspx

 

[VirtualLarry]

Did you have a particular router or device that you were thinking of using for the load-balancing? I think that Asus routers can now do this out of the box, with updated factory firmware, they support dual-
WAN (not as many WANs as Tomato, but it's a start). Also don't know if the factory Asus dual-WAN features policy-based routing at all, like Tomato does, although, thus far, I haven't had much success getting it to work properly. (Although, the round-robin load-balancing works for some multi-stream speedtests, like fast.com, and downloading lots of ISOs.)

 

[jaysawatzki]

I was planning on using the standard motherboard multi ethernet connections to bridge connections in windows at the very least. I think that bridging is the same as load balancing.

I assumed also that windows has an internal load balancing software, I think it does, that what I was just reading about.

I am building a nice computer with dual cpu's, and the motherboard has 4 10gbe ports, so I was going to use the internal windows bridging or load balancing, depending on what I can find.

I was hoping that after the 1000mbps speeds become available in my area that I could bond 3 connections with a peplink bpl-210 to get 3000mbps. but that is still 1,300$ away and many months of waiting until the speed becomes available in my area.

until then I was just going to load balance with the onboard 4 10gbe ports.

edit: the chipset for the LAN on my motherboard is a Intel LAN 82574L chipset, the drivers support teaming, which is intels way of saying load balancing

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that bridging is the same as load balancing.

HA! You have a lot to learn.

(And the answer is, NO, that is not the same as load-balancing.)

 

[VirtualLarry]

drivers support teaming, which is intels way of saying load balancing

That doesn't always mean the same thing, either.

Round-robin load-balancing of WAN connections, is markedly different in implementation, than LAN port aggregation or teaming. (Although, that can be done in round-robin fashion too, but in that case, it's generally per-packet, and not per-connection, and all four LAN connections have the same effective MAC address, I believe.)

 

[jaysawatzki]

HA! You have a lot to learn.

(And the answer is, NO, that is not the same as load-balancing.)

yeah i saw that later that bridging was different from load balancing. however, if I am not mistaken THIS time, I believe that bridging still makes two networks active on one pc at the same time. I guess not load balancing, but still two networks on the same pc is similar to load balancing regardless of if its smart enough to know which load is operating at which speed. not sure, correct me.

 

[jaysawatzki]

That doesn't always mean the same thing, either.

Round-robin load-balancing of WAN connections, is markedly different in implementation, than LAN port aggregation or teaming. (Although, that can be done in round-robin fashion too, but in that case, it's generally per-packet, and not per-connection, and all four LAN connections have the same effective MAC address, I believe.)

for intel, load balancing is a subset of teaming. in intels drivers, you set up a team, and then select whether it is load balancing or aggregating bandwidth. I personally am not smart enough to know the difference between load balancing two networks and aggregating. perhaps one is server terminology?

edit: so I assume that in round robin, if it is per packet, it is much more like bonding. however that doesn't seem possible. round robin makes it seem as though you can combine the speed of a download. per packet..hmm.. kinda makes it seem as though it is server side stuff. or maybe upload stuff

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.ezlan.net/loadbalance.html

 

[mxnerd]

Bridging is just - bridging, connecting 2 networks.

Router load balancing usually use round robin method.

You connect to one site and could go through WAN1, you go to site 2 and you go through WAN2.

PepLink SpeedFusion is for team usage, like office to office or office to mobile user's VPN usage. It does not magically bond multiple WAN connections into one big pipe.

P. 93 Peplink Balance Bandwidth Bonding SpeedFusion functionality securely connects one or more branch offices to your company's main headquarters or to other branches. The data, voice,and video communications between these locations are kept confidential across the public Internet.

https://download.peplink.com/manual/Peplink_Balance_v6.1_user_manual.pdf

 

[jaysawatzki]

Not sure what does bond, if a peplink doesn't bond. I am needing a 10gbe ports to bond 3 or more 1 gb/s Ethernet connections together.

doesn't peplink have in the name bonding? those setups are pretty expensive, but if your sure they aren't bonding, what kind of equipment will I need. speedfusion has a throughput for their bonded speed even. are you sure that isn't bonded speed.

 

[mxnerd]

https://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/5249/64/

SpeedFusion is Peplinks patented technology that powers enterprise grade VPNs. By tapping into the bandwidth of up to 13 low-cost cable, DSL, cellular, and other links, SpeedFusion turns your multiple connections into a single bonded connection.

In order to create a SpeedFusion connection you’ll need a minimum of two pieces of Peplink technology with SpeedFusion capabilities. This typically consists of a primary unit, installed at a headquarters or data center location with access to a high speed internet connection, and a second unit that is mobile (in the case of cellular bonding) or installed at a remote or branch office.

 

[JackMDS]

If an ISP does not provide Bonding you can not Bond Bandwidth from few sources.

The Speed fusion can work when you install a delivery unit in a corporate headquarters and make with it your own Bond source. Then the client in another location can tap to it. I.e., the system in the headquarter become the "Delivery "ISP".

The Delivery system is an Expensive installation that cost over $1000.

 

[jaysawatzki]

right, the isp has to allow bonding with docsis 3.0 stuff..?