Load Balancing Router...

[Afasoas]

Hello,

The studio I'm working for has a fairly poor ISP. The bandwidth is insufficient and there have been quite a few issues with the quality of the connection lately.

I'm investigating other options too, like FTTC and leased lines but the former isn't too readily available and the latter is $$$.

A friend of mine has suggested getting a second common or garden broadband connection and load-balancing between the two.

Anyone here got any experience? Can anyone recommend a router that will do this?

Thanks

[Kim]

No direct experience, but doing it properly (for certain values of properly, pertaining to faster individual downloads) requires an ISP that supports bonding.  Otherwise you're just splitting traffic between lines according to some arbitrary parameter (which can be a good approach - VOIP on one, general internet access on another, for example).

[ran doner]

The only load balancing I have actual experience of is with Drayteks, ranging from 2820s to 3900s. They were all setup to send packets out based on destination port and/or remote host. The 3900 has the advantage of many more available Wan ports so if you had to you could have 50+ adsl lines all hooked up. The 3900 adds in some weighting of traffic too. Not sure where the 28 and 29 series are now as the firmware moves so quick. I have vague memories of them doing weighting and also QoS but have the feeling they weren't too effective but that was a couple of years ago.

[davelodwig]

I've done a bit of this sort of thing, in principle I've always used it to ensure that if one link goes down we always have a connection. Mixed connection types usually help (fibre & microwave being my favorites).

I think probably once you've factored in the equipment costs to do this properly, and the time to get it set up you'll have spent more than just getting a better connection.

[wajcgac]

I spotted this in an email I got. It got my attention because I can often lose wireless connection depending on where I am in my house.

http://www.ebuyer.com/370669-tp-link-tl-pa411kit-av500-mini-powerline-adapter-stater-kit-tl-pa411kit

But reading through the details you can also set it to guarantee all applications have some bandwidth

"Built-in Quality of Service assures the quality of bandwidth sensitive applications such as voice, video and online games".

This may be exactly what Kim is suggesting here

Otherwise you're just splitting traffic between lines according to some arbitrary parameter (which can be a good approach - VOIP on one, general internet access on another, for example).

Whether it's suitable for your application I don't know.

[davelodwig]

Though for £28 (ish) I wouldn't expect too much from the QOS on the device. We use QOS to make sure that the Video conference hardware takes priority over the internet traffic from workstations, it's quite complicated at times.

[Kim]

You can go a long way just by rate limiting to something slightly lower than the bandwidth of the link and prioritising small packets (indeed, I'd say this was always worth doing).  Beyond that, here be dragons.

Of course, QOS on your router can only affect things leaving your router.  You need something at the other end to prioritise the downstream.

[pcolbeck]

Though for £28 (ish) I wouldn't expect too much from the QOS on the device. We use QOS to make sure that the Video conference hardware takes priority over the internet traffic from workstations, it's quite complicated at times.

Quite complicated ? I wrote a paper on implementing QoS for a large council. It ran to over 50 pages and their routers and switches were all from the same manufacturer ...

QoS is a necessary evil and network admins hate it because every bit of kit in the world implements it differently, even different modules in the same switch may do it differently.

That being said a good QoS model implemented on a network can make a massive difference.

[Afasoas]

I've ditched the idea.
I found that Zen internet are now offering fibre in the area with 80 Mbit/s and nearly 20 Mbit/s up.
That's compared to current provision of 10 Mbit/s down and 0.5 up.

Sounds like a substantial improvement and it's only a marginal increase on what we currently pay.
Quite cheap too considering it's a business package.