Ergo, you should ask your provider if they support link aggregation over DSL before expending a lot of effort on it.
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Bob  All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 |  Posted - Apr 30 2009 : 10:01PMI recently purchased a new motherboard that offers dual LAN connections and supports teaming. Because my home has two separate DSL lines, I'd like to set up link aggregation in order to increase my bandwidth. Although the documentation that came with the motherboard was more than sufficient for basic set-up, it didn't provide any information about how to implement the link aggregation. Do I need to buy a dual WAN router or can I use two single WAN routers? What else do I need to do to set this up? I've done some Google searching, but that hasn't been very helpful given my lack of basic understanding of the subject. What I'm really looking for is a step-by-step guide that will educate me on the topic of networking generally as well as cover practical implementation solutions. Also, I'd like to build a web server for some business applications in the not-too-distant future. I'd appreciate any help you can give me and any resources you can point me to on these matters. Thanks! --------------------- [typos] Edited by - bob on Apr 30 2009 [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - Apr 30 2009 : 10:31PM Ergo, you should ask your provider if they support link aggregation over DSL before expending a lot of effort on it. [Link] |
| Drew Black broken crankshaft 8009 Posts 9/99 | Posted - May 1 2009 : 5:12PM In the past ISPs would allow teaming of multiple ISDN connections. It was a pretty common setup for remote offices prior to DSL. I don't know if they will do the same for DSL. Have you seen this tutorial on teaming and bonding? [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 2 2009 : 4:04PM I hadn't seen that tutorial, but it's just the kind of thing that I've been looking for. Thanks, Drew! [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 4 2009 : 4:54PM Thanks for steering me in the right direction, Hardware! * * * It turns out that my ISP now offers a plan under which I can double my bandwidth for $5 extra per month or quadruple my bandwidth for $10 extra. That's not nearly as good as a "free" solution, given that I'm currently paying $15 each for two separate DSL streams that aren't 100% utilized (a wireless network just didn't work well in our home because of the distance between, and walls separating, the nodes and two accounts seemed to be the easiest fix). But it will do. The question remains, what are the possible uses/benefits (if any) of the two ethernet controllers/dual LAN ports on my new motherboard if not to enable me to increase my download bandwidth? I'm still not clear on what can be accomplished by bonding or teaming LAN connections. [Link] |
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| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 4 2009 : 4:56PM [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - May 4 2009 : 9:22PM [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 5 2009 : 1:30AM I suppose if I build a server for storage and/or a mini-website, the extra LAN port on my desktop may come in handy for connectivity. [Link] |
| Proxy Member 38 Posts 5/09 | Posted - May 12 2009 : 4:35PM [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 12 2009 : 5:58PM [Link] |
| Drew Black broken crankshaft 8009 Posts 9/99 | Posted - May 12 2009 : 6:48PM [Link] |
| Proxy Member 38 Posts 5/09 | Posted - May 12 2009 : 6:53PM Alternatively you can run a router that supports NLB via some embedded QoS algorithm. For moderate use, it is a $150 solution. Not a bad thing at all, and very much at the appliance level as in simple as using microwave to heat up soup. I guess though you have to consider that your demarc at your place and all of your services have to be fault tolerant. Example would be two different ISP's, two carrier technologies, etc and so on. fuck typos [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 13 2009 : 1:43AM I'd better read that really long white paper on networking, teaming, and bonding that I downloaded the other day. [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - May 13 2009 : 4:18AM Ergo, the first thing you need to do is decide what level of fault tolerance you are trying to achieve. [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 13 2009 : 1:15PM Now I've got to figure out whether load-balancing would serve any meaningful purpose on a desktop computer and, if so, whether my onboard hardware supports it. Otherwise, the second LAN port just isn't going to be useful for me right now. [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - May 13 2009 : 1:55PM [Link] |
| Proxy Member 38 Posts 5/09 | Posted - May 13 2009 : 3:11PM If it were me I would fiddle around, get a little router and assign protocols to specific lines. Example: HTTP to port 1 (the faster connection) p2p to port 2 (with a maximum bandwidth set at x number) SMTP to port 2 I'd create some static routes to this and that... etc and so on. I'd do it more for fun then any real benefit...but I am odd like that. [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 13 2009 : 4:03PM The thing is, both DSL lines are from the same company -- which, as I've learned in this thread, is why the fault-tolerance function isn't meaningful. It seems that I've also misunderstood the load-balancing function. Until now, I thought that I could use the teaming/bonding software to automatically split the decoding of ALL incoming traffic between the two ethernet controllers and thereby improve speed in the way that a RAID 1+0 array might. If I'm reading everybody correctly, however, I can't do that. I DO have a four-port router and may fiddle around per your suggestion; it would teach me something. And I'm odd like that, too. Thanks for the help! [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - May 13 2009 : 5:35PM [Link] |
| jrv Senior Member 1266 Posts 2/03 | Posted - May 14 2009 : 4:40AM When the cable modem link fails I think it's the modem itself that locks up. But when DSL goes down the DSL modem responds and the maintanence page in the modem suggests it's OK and that the upstream link is down. I suspect that whenever the phone company reboots their upstream gear nobody is reinitializing the link until I reboot my DSL modem. So if I had two DSL links they'd likely both go down at the same time (since it seems to be a likely-shared upstream box that quits) - not useful for fault-tolerance. I can cycle power to both modems remotely, so as long as one or the other is up I can get in and get the other going again. Some web sites don't believe in multi-homed hosts and are a pain in the rear to use if you have two WAN addresses. If you got hacking skillz the Soekris net5501 is a great low-power router platform with 4 NIC ports and should be able to run most any router firmware (the net5501 is like a PC with normal INT calls but no 8042 - if that doesn't mean anything to you then ignore this paragraph). [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 14 2009 : 1:00PM It doesn't mean anything to me right now, but my plan is that it will mean something to me in the near future. Self-education and all that. Thanks for your input! [Link] |
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