Dual WAN broadband for faster internet

Stickman

Stickman

Stickman

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7 Jun 2009
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394
Location
East mids.
We have both ADSL BT infinity 2 (good upspeed) and Cable Virgin Media (good downspeed) internet and I was wanting to combine the two so that I can utilise the bandwidth of both simultaneously.

I know there are faster solutions I could buy if money were no object, but what I want is a solution where I only need to pay once upfront (hardware cost) and not any more per month, given that I already have the above two WAN ISP supplies and am not wanting to pay out for leased lines or any other such monthly expenditures.

There shouldn't be a conflict of interest in asking this here as I can't see any Dual WAN capable routers on OcUK, but if there is, mods please feel free to remove the following link and point me to the Dual WAN goodness here at OcUK:

http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/?categoryid=227&model=TL-ER5120

This router from TP-Link would seem to be able to combine up to four WAN internet connections, but I must say having not done this before I am looking for advice on whether it would work and if not, what else I might need to achieve the high bandwidth goodness of combining the two?
 
Are you aware of the difference between load balancing and bonding (or other term eg aggregation)?
 
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you will find that the load balancing will indeed use both connections at once. (or 4)

it will basically use how ever many wan connections you have and send data over them in sequence as defined by the hardware. you see a lot of ADSL gear with 2 connections as they use failover but this one utilises load balancing so should do what you want.
 
#Chri5# said:
Are you ware of the difference between load balancing and bonding (or other term eg aggregation)?
Click to expand...

I am now, been reading up on these things tonight... and so now I know how to better phrase my question:

Is there a product for less than about £400 (with little or no monthly fee) than can bond the two internet connections and not just load balance them so I can use close to the full 210 mbps down (150 virgin, 60 bt) and 28 mbps up (10 virgin, 18 bt) that we already get/pay for? (I say 'close to' because I accept there might be a small overhead of bandwidth loss in the combination).

And if the router I linked did only do load balancing (not bonding) - would it still give the combined speed for something like P2P where multiple connections are made (i.e., would it connect over both WANs for a given download)?
 
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I'm happy to be corrected, but my experience is that bonding needs ISP level support, so trying to join a BT and Virgin connection isn't going happen. IIRC, I've seen people get this working but it needs a lot of work and have your own kit in a datacenter to terminate your tunnels from the two connections.

I don't know about P2P but I have seen load balanced connections cause problems when traffic to a single destination is split over two connections. The remote host (eg a web site with a firewall in front of it) gets very confused when it seems the same "conversation" arriving from two different IPs. On the SonicWall UTM appliances I work with a lot, there's an option called "Use Source and Destination IP Address binding" which resolves this. P2P to different hosts might work better though.
 
There is no easy or cheap way to do what your wanting for general use.

The easiest way to do it is when both connections are on the same ISP and the ISP supports bonding or some kind of link aggregation.
 
#Chri5# said:
I'm happy to be corrected, but my experience is that bonding needs ISP level support, so trying to join a BT and Virgin connection isn't going happen. IIRC, I've seen people get this working but it needs a lot of work and have your own kit in a datacenter to terminate your tunnels from the two connections.

I don't know about P2P but I have seen load balanced connections cause problems when traffic to a single destination is split over two connections. The remote host (eg a web site with a firewall in front of it) gets very confused when it seems the same "conversation" arriving from two different IPs. On the SonicWall UTM appliances I work with a lot, there's an option called "Use Source and Destination IP Address binding" which resolves this. P2P to different hosts might work better though.
Click to expand...

yes it will need support at the ISP / termination endpoint.
 
I was trying to remember the name of a service I've seen (but not used) last night and remembered it this morning - SharedBand. PDF here

£10 per connection per month for 250GB or £20 for 2000GB.
 
#Chri5# said:
I was trying to remember the name of a service I've seen (but not used) last night and remembered it this morning - SharedBand. PDF here

£10 per connection per month for 250GB or £20 for 2000GB.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that.

I now have enough information to be going on with.

Thanks everyone. :)
 
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