Double speed with Multiple ISP Connections

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Vette5885

Gawd
Joined
Apr 12, 2005
Messages
629
Is there a way to use a router (I'd assume a Linux box) that will connect to two different internet connections to increase the speed to the net?

I have two situations where this would be helpful:
1 - At college
My college is running a slow, 10mbit edge network, but fortunately has dual OC3 to the internet. I want to use more bandwidth than what is allotted (they have a packetshaper, so its actually less than 10mbps), so can I have a linux box that connects to both of our ports (10mb each for me and my roommate) and then to our private network on the other side? Can I expand such a thing to 3 WAN ports (Three ports in my apartment)?

2 - at home
My neighbor uses his broadband mostly during the day; I use it during the night. We both have WiFi (I'm 802.11b on channel 11, he's b/g on 1). I want to have it so that I can use both connections. (I know that it would take dual wifi cards)

I know that i've seen cable modem hotboxes that do this, and I've heard of its use with ISDN connections too.

Would this just require a load balancing box?
 
Well for your college their is an easy answer:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1026346800#post1026346800


In a more general sense, you can't combine two connections and double the speed, at best you are looking at load balancing two connections to provide a more constant speed.


.... and because I can't leave well enough alone and based on your attempts at school, does your neighbor know you are using his net access?
 
This has been covered man many times on this forum so do a search and you will get some more in depth information.

But, to make a long story short... You should be able to load balance the two connections, but you will not be able to bond the two connections. Your speed for individual clients or applications will not double, but you will have more available bandwidth to support additional clients and applications (i.e., a download from ABC.NET will take just as long as it did before, but two simultaneous downloads from ABC.NET should not take as along, obviously this depends on how your device works and is configured)...
 
Well, I didn't really specify, but I would mirror the setup in my neighbor's house, so he has better speeds in the day (using my connection) and I would have better speeds at night (with his).

I think the next question is how granular can the connection be load balanced? Is it by packet source IP, source port, or something else? I assume that it won't split it up packet by packet (packet A to connection 1, packet B to connection 2, etc). I know that TCP/IP routing is on a per-packet basis, so splitting up which packet goes where shouldn't mess up the connection, and being that most of the traffic will end up on the same switch, the packets won't become too out of order.

either way, I will search.
Thanks

Also, this is mostly for the 'I've done this before..' factor. Right now I'm in college, so I'm trying to get as much hands-on experience as possible. Playing with multiple connections in order to double (well, almost double - thank you, overhead) may not net me too much knowledge, but trying to get a router to play nicely in that situation can teach me a lot.
 
Actually, splitting up which packet goes were will mess up a TCP connection, as the source address will be different depending on which connection you're using.

So beyond keeping TCP streams together, if you're using linux routing you can divide up the traffic however you want (round robin, destination ip, etc). See the Advanced Routing Howto http://lartc.org/howto/
 
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