Load Balancing 3 DSL Connections

[Curiosityx]

Greetings, im looking to bond three ADSL Max connections into a single circuit, this would be achieved using Cisco Equipment, now i know that Cisco don't natively support true bonding as bonding is an awful but do have three methods of load balancing namely GLBP, HSRP and VRRP.

My intial idea was to configure three Cisco 877's in a single GLBP group in load balancing mode or use a single 2801 with three ADSL WIC's installed, static routers and similar metrics.

Has anyone attempted the above before and had relatively good success?

 

[Curiosityx]

Never done that exact setup myself but GLBP would be the way forward, as HSRP and VRRP would only allow an active-standby setup as I understand it.
//TrX

Indeed the other option i was considering was an Xrio Q-Balancer but i realy am not a fan to be honest.

 

[Curiosityx]

You've got to question if your customer can afford a 2801 and 3x WICs then maybe they can afford a proper internet connection?

You're talking £2000+ list price, more like £1200 at real prices but still. Having a cisco won't help when BT's dslam has a fit...

It'll work with GLBP but it doesn't change the fact it's a silly setup.

Not necessarily as a partner of both Comstor and Cisco we receive very attractive discounts and 70% reduced on NFR equipment.

Are these xDSL circuits for the purpose of connecting a remote site in a WAN P2P fashion? or do you wish to bond 3 xDSL connections for internet use?

If its to connect like a WAN, configure 3 GRE tunnels back to the endpoint (HO?) and run EIGRP or OSPF over each GRE tunnel, the remote site then learns each route with an identical metric, each route appears in the table with 3 best paths, it also advertises its conneced LAN range back across the 3 tunnels where the HO does exactly the same. Be careful with tunnels, because the rule of split horizon is easily broken and the remote site can re-advertise networks it learnt from the HO back out of the other tunnel interfaces, (EIGRP Stub connected, is your friend) <we do this all the time>
Just make sure, if its IPVPN/MPLS, that the ISP isn't injecting your LAN range via BGP on the xDSL gateways, as that will break it, the LAN ranges should all be learnt across the tunnels.

If you want to do this with 3 internet connections, its impossible to get 3x the bandwidth for each session without the use of BGP, as the internet needs to know that there are 3 ways back to you.

Unfortunately not as the site in question is a standalone entity ive done similar configs but using Policy Based Routing with EIGRP on point to point serial links. Nice that you remembered my queries with MPLS but this is a different project

I would very much like to configure this in a lab environment but its difficult to simulate DSL circuits. The customer has insisted that make the full bandwidth available to all users ive tried to explain that the load can be shared between links but they are a little stubborn and dont understand the underlying implications.

I good friend of mine is the technical lead for a company out of Nottingham who specialises in DSL Services using the Xrio equipment, only difference in this case is that they have equipment in all exchanges as well as at the CP so that links are terminated end to end.

Cheers for the replies guys, good information as usual