Shotgunning Multiple Broadband Connections?

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meaty

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 13, 2001
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Hello,
at my work (small office) we have 2 dsl lines.. one for upstairs one for downstairs. I have access to both routers and access to both DSL lines.. I'm running a box with windows server 2003 (small business premium) that has dual nic's. is there anyway I could use both DSL lines at the same time for better speed?

thanks,
Mike
 
Yes and no. You can't take two (for instance) 768k DSL lines and put them together to make one 1.5Mbps line. You can, however, put them together for load balancing though, which would probably benefit you in an office environment. This will make it so that clients on your network will be able to share the two lines. If someone is hogging most of the bandwidth on DSL1, others can be using DSL2.

I know for sure that the Compex NP26GUSB router handles load balancing and I'm sure that others do. You of course need to purchase two routers to do this.

Edit- Compex calls it "parallel broadband" and you can read about it on page 45 of this PDF. http://www.cpx.com/prodimages/NP26G_USB.pdf
 
nomar said:
Yes and no. You can't take two (for instance) 768k DSL lines and put them together to make one 1.5Mbps line. You can, however, put them together for load balancing though, which would probably benefit you in an office environment. This will make it so that clients on your network will be able to share the two lines. If someone is hogging most of the bandwidth on DSL1, others can be using DSL2.

I know for sure that the Compex NP26GUSB router handles load balancing and I'm sure that others do. You of course need to purchase two routers to do this.

Edit- Compex calls it "parallel broadband" and you can read about it on page 45 of this PDF. http://www.cpx.com/prodimages/WebcamGuide.pdf
Click to expand...


thanks now i have to convince my boss to order 2 of these.. hehe...
 
huh?? if its load balancing, you would connect both of your dsl's into that single unit....that way..it can load balance...the two...
 
If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, you can get a linux box that can do low level load balancing ( will literally go out on eth0 to get img1.png, and out on eth1 to get img2.png ).

Combine that with a squid server, and no one should have any complaints. :)
 
draconius said:
huh?? if its load balancing, you would connect both of your dsl's into that single unit....that way..it can load balance...the two...
Click to expand...

sorry thought it did it between 2 devices.. even better.. now it won't be as hard to convince him.. thanks...
 
draconius said:
huh?? if its load balancing, you would connect both of your dsl's into that single unit....that way..it can load balance...the two...
Click to expand...

Where is this magical 2nd port on the router? The option I showed requires 2 routers.

There are some devices that have 2 ports on them - such as the Nexland or the Linksys RV802 but they are more than 2x as expensive as the solution I suggested.

And yes, as XOR != OR says, it can be accomplished with a Linux router as well.
 
If it requires two routers, then I'm completely lost on the "load balancing" portion. A computer is only going to have one default gateway, and therefore talk only to one router. How does Router #2 come into play?

//edit: also, I think you posted the wrong explanatory PDF, it's only 2 pages

//edit 2: best I can find is this blurb, which explains precisely zero
Compex unique Parallel Broadband gives superior performance through delicate loadbalancing and increases resiliency against broadband access downtime because of its fail-over capability.
Click to expand...
 
Oops, fixed the link.

Taken from the PDF:

The Compex NetPassage 26G is equipped with the exclusive Parallel Broadband
technology to provide you scalable Internet bandwidth with Load Balancing and Fail-
Over Redundancy.

By installing multiple units of the Compex NetPassage 26G cascaded using Parallel
Broadband, you may balance the Internet traffic generated from your private network
over multiple broadband connections - providing you with aggregated bandwidth! In the
event of a particular broadband connection failing, the NetPassage 26G in cascade will
automatically switch to use the functional broadband channels, giving you an added
peace of mind with its Fail-Over Redundancy capability.

To implement Parallel Broadband, you will need to install two or more units of the
Compex NetPassage 26G in the network, each connected to its broadband Internet
service account. There is no restriction to the type of broadband Internet accounts they
are connected to (whether Cable or ADSL). You may thus have one NetPassage 26G
connected to Cable Internet, while the other to an ADSL line.
Click to expand...
 
and a bit more:

2. Next simply select Enable and click
the Apply button to make the
changes effective.
3. Repeat this for the other NetPassage
26Gs in your network and they will
communicate with each other and
assign each new user to the gateway
that has the smallest load, so that
there are approximately the same
number of users on each gateway.
Click to expand...

Reading that it may be a bit misleading. Since it refers to "new users" I wonder what would happen if there were for instance 10 users on one router and one of them really hammered one connection. Would the other users be "balanced" out to the other connection or would only "new" users be balanced. You might want to contact their support to get an answer on this if you are considering it.

I only have one of the routers but I reviewed it for Designtechnica here and it is one of the best as far as advanced features go.
 
OK, makes more sense now. It's sort of a poor-man's load balancing, since it's a per-IP basis.
Still a pretty neat trick.
 
If you aren't scared of doing some deep voodoo in linux: http://lartc.org/

If you do go this route, I can't help beyond the superficial<sp>. I don't understand half of it, and I've been reading it, on and off, for about a month now.
 
go for the lartc thing. i was interested in setting up something like this in my neighborhood (shared cable/dsl lines, everyone chips in) but there wasn't enough interest so it kinda died off. i'd like to see someone get it going so i have proof. i'll try to help you get it set up.

you can find a cheap pentium 2 box and 2 10baseT nics and that'll be more than enough.
 
I know some basics about linux. So I'll have to read that website. I've got an extra p3 box around here somewhere and if I can't find any nic's I know I can get my boss to at least buy those.. hmm.. I'll let you know when I get the time to try for it.. thanks for you help everyone.


unhappy_mage said:
go for the lartc thing. i was interested in setting up something like this in my neighborhood (shared cable/dsl lines, everyone chips in) but there wasn't enough interest so it kinda died off. i'd like to see someone get it going so i have proof. i'll try to help you get it set up.

you can find a cheap pentium 2 box and 2 10baseT nics and that'll be more than enough.
Click to expand...
 
meaty said:
I know some basics about linux. So I'll have to read that website. I've got an extra p3 box around here somewhere and if I can't find any nic's I know I can get my boss to at least buy those.. hmm.. I'll let you know when I get the time to try for it.. thanks for you help everyone.
Click to expand...
Don't be afraid to ask for help here. I'm still playing with it, and it may be I can help with a specific question or two.
 
XOR != OR said:
If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, you can get a linux box that can do low level load balancing
Click to expand...
I want to do that here with freeBSD at our home once we get enough money for dual broadband. $50/mo for broadband (its actual speed is 700d/730u Kbps uncapped) and then a phone line... ow.
 
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