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Multi-provider Home Network?

ultimatebob

ultimatebob

Lifer
I have two big ISP's in my area... A cable company with somewhat unreliable 3Meg service, and a DSL provider with fairly reliable 1.5Meg service. I'm curious what kind of hardware it would take to combine the bandwidth of these two internet providers into a quasi-4.5Meg internet connection with redundancy in case one of the providers fails.

I'm hoping for a semi-automated solution... something that do load balancing between the two connections and automatically reroute traffic if one of the connections dies or becomes unstable. Are their any fairly inexpensive routers that can handle multiple providers, or would I need a build a server and/or buy some high-end gear to make this doable?
 
I know cisco's can do this as long as your requests are outbound(web surfing/downloading). I am tempted to do this myself but don't want to spend the money on DSL. The other option is to use some of the dual wan routers. There are a few out there and they work decent for what you want although as a cisco engineer I am partial to using cisco's.
 
I've got 3 meg DSL and 4 meg cable. The dsl gives me better upload speed, so any of my machines that I access remotely go through DSL.

For the machines I use for download, I use the cable.

I use two separate firewalls, two different gateway addresses.

Since any "combination" / aggregate boxes are just going to round robin most of the requests on a per-session basis, there really is no gain (and frequent disadvantage) to "automatic" aggregation ... especially with different link speeds. Without something like the EIGRP "variance" command to offset the difference, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

It's not even good for braggin rights. It's usually just another reasonable idea implemented poorly.

FWIW

Scott
 
You would think that someone would have written basic some network load balancing software that I could toss on an old Linux system in order to make this work, no? I mean, come on... Loads of cheap and stable bandwidth to use has to be on every geek's wish list.... right after Bawls and Star Trek DVD's, anyway 🙂
 
Originally posted by: ultimatebob
You would think that someone would have written basic some network load balancing software that I could toss on an old Linux system in order to make this work, no? I mean, come on... Loads of cheap and stable bandwidth to use has to be on every geek's wish list.... right after Bawls and Star Trek DVD's, anyway 🙂
Click to expand...

Unless your ISP would be willing to "bind" the two connections so that they had one IP address this would not be practical.
 
Think about it bob, just because you can configure your end, are the servers at the other end going to play along automatically? Unless you own that server too, the simple answer is "not very likely"
 
Originally posted by: ultimatebob
You would think that someone would have written basic some network load balancing software that I could toss on an old Linux system in order to make this work, no? I mean, come on... Loads of cheap and stable bandwidth to use has to be on every geek's wish list.... right after Bawls and Star Trek DVD's, anyway 🙂
Click to expand...


nope sorry, i have opt online and most servers canit even handle my 10m.......heheheh.

the software is out there but its not cheap and dunno if it works for linux.........
 
Well I've seen a Imagestream router feed 5 T1 lines from 2 different providers combine the signals and share all the lines for 7mb bandwith. he than feeds it to the dialup lines a few servers and some rented rack space. The router costed ~$2K before the T1 cards...
 
Originally posted by: Tazanator
Well I've seen a Imagestream router feed 5 T1 lines from 2 different providers combine the signals and share all the lines for 7mb bandwith. he than feeds it to the dialup lines a few servers and some rented rack space. The router costed ~$2K before the T1 cards...
Click to expand...
Yeah so the combination of all Shared Clients is 7Mb/sec. But that Does Not mean that one Client by himself can download One Single file at 7Mb/sec.

:sun:
 
Originally posted by: JackMDS
Originally posted by: Tazanator
Well I've seen a Imagestream router feed 5 T1 lines from 2 different providers combine the signals and share all the lines for 7mb bandwith. he than feeds it to the dialup lines a few servers and some rented rack space. The router costed ~$2K before the T1 cards...
Click to expand...
Yeah so the combination of all Shared Clients is 7Mb/sec. But that Does Not mean that one Client by himself can download One Single file at 7Mb/sec.

:sun:
Click to expand...

bingo.
 
The quest for wishfull thinking, or let make it simple. :roll:

1. My DSL provides 2Mb/sec. & My Cable Provides 3Mb/sec.

I can use a Dual WAN Router and computer X on my Network can Download a File @ 2Mb/sec.

Computer Y on my Network can Download at the same time a File @ 3Mb/sec.

All together My network gets 5Mb/sec . Downloading two independent Files.


2. I want computer X by itself to Download @ 5Mb/sec.

Scenario 2 can not be done without a special arrangement with an ISP. :thumbsdown::shocked::thumbsdown::shocked:

:sun:
 
Zyxel has some cheap hardware, the Zywall 35 is roughly 850 bucks and has dual wan.
Be careful though, i had some firmware issues with one zywall product i bought hoever the replacement worked well.
 
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