Bonding Lines

Can anyone comment on the feasability of this. We run a vpn between 2 sites and getting a good upstream is quite important. One site is capable of Annex M so would be 18000/2400 approx - the other site though will only run approx 6000/1000.
I have looked at the Vigor 2820 router range & they have a facility to bond 2 lines (using the inbuilt modem + an external one connected to the 2nd port) - what I am wondering is whether if we instal a 2nd adsl line, connect both to the router with load balancing set, when we dial out the vpn will that in theory make use of the full bandwidth of both lines? (and effectively then have 2000 upstream from the remote site which would be close to the upstream of the annexM site & as such give a 2mb up/down vpn conection) and does it matter if the lines are the same or different isp's?
I suspect the technical issues are not as simple as I might hope!

Balancing and bonding are 2 different things. From what you descibe you would need bonding (MLPPP). You'd need to find an ISP which supplies this, there used to be a few but they seem to have stopped offering it.

Hi,

I have been speaking to these guys for the same reason, they have to supply the lines but they do bond them. Not sure they were bonding ADSL 2+ right now due to stability issues.

The Draytek will load balance not bond so you can have it pass VPN traffic through one connection and all other traffic through the other if that helps.

http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/

Graham

The 2820 will route traffic via WAN 1 and WAN2 based on port address and local IP address too.

In reply to a post by zebedeee:

The 2820 will route traffic via WAN 1 and WAN2 based on port address and local IP address too.

If you leave the rules empty it should load balance randomly. (I have a 2820n).

That's correct.. but can play havoc with certain websites that lock session to a certain IP.

Lloyds TSB is one of those.. I'd safely say most banking sites (maybe even e-commerce too) would implement some sort of session IP checks - I know we do.

Matt

In reply to a post by xilonet:

That's correct.. but can play havoc with certain websites that lock session to a certain IP.

Lloyds TSB is one of those.. I'd safely say most banking sites (maybe even e-commerce too) would implement some sort of session IP checks - I know we do.

Matt

If the user is going with the 2820, I'm pretty sure a rule could be created that states all traffic from LAN to WAN IP "enter problematic banking websites IP here" runs just down WAN1. I could be wrong I'm not able to check it right now.

Yes, you can do that.. but when does it stop being practical? How many sites will you have to do that for when logging in?

Matt

We run a similar setup to connect 2 branch offices and have been doing so for the past 18 months or so.

http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/services/bonded-adsl

We are using this service and have a two separate "bonds" to the outside world they look like one ip address so no issues with banking sites etc as you will get with a load balanced solution. Each remote office has a "bond" with 3 links in it.

Our lines are not of the highest quality but "bond" one has 6 dsl lines in providing around 1.4mb to each remote site upload.

Bond 2 is used for internet access and a route for all our outgoing emails. and has three dsl lines.

Its not a cheap solution, but at the time it was cheaper than a lease line. However we are about to move to a dedicated 10mb Fibre from BT as they have some very competitive pricing at the moment. Each remote site will have bonded dsl again provided by BT.

Another option you might want to consider is EFM "Ethernet First Mile", this is basically ethernet over your pots line. BT also have an offer on this which is quite competitive when compared to a bonded solution.

Hope this helps

Dont even bother with a load balance solution its much more pain than its worth.

* its worth noting that regular dsl doesn't bond brilliantly, for example if i download a file from the internet without a download manager it will not use all the combined dsl throughput. However if i use a download manager i can manage to flood the connection. I could be wrong but ive been told ADSL2 works much better for bonding.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Nov-09 15:19:11)

In reply to a post by xilonet:

That's correct.. but can play havoc with certain websites that lock session to a certain IP.

Lloyds TSB is one of those.. I'd safely say most banking sites (maybe even e-commerce too) would implement some sort of session IP checks - I know we do.

Matt

That's easy to solve - just route all traffic on port 443 to a desdignated WAN port.