Multiple Broadband Connections at Home? 47
Another Web Monkey asks: "I am a typical geek. After working all day on the computer, I come home and get right back on the internet. But unlike my corporate office, I don't have multiple internet connections. I know there are others not happy with a single DSL/Cable connection, but can't afford T1's. Some dual broadband routers are starting to appear on the market. I want to know what others are doing to satisfy, even if temporarily, their cravings for faster connections at home? Has anyone tried these routers, or have another solution?"
Move to a Less-Populated Node (Score:3)
Re:Move to a Less-Populated Node (Score:1)
The telco might put in a little box with some cards in it, but that's owned by them, so you don't need to mess with it.
Sangoma [sangoma.com] makes an internal PCI CSU/DSU that is completely compatible with Linux (open source drivers in the kernel).
If you use this, you can have CSU/DSU, firewall, and router all in one Linux box. Just plug the raw T1 right into the Linux box and it comes up as a network interface. We've had one of these running 2 years with no trouble at all.
They weren't cheap when we bought ours (About $800), but then again, CSU/DSUs can be pricey too unless you can pick one up used, and last I checked, most CSU/DSUs made you use exotic serial cables (RS-422?) to connect to your router, which must support said exotic serial interface.
Won't work as some people might expect (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Won't work as some people might expect (Score:3, Informative)
Mod this parent up, as they are correct. However, you can do as one post said, which is have a colo box, you can follow this example:
http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.loadshare.
If you don't have access to a colo box, you can spread the load of different logical connections.
I've done this under linux. You will use Advanced IP routing. iproute2
Here is the URL howto:
http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multipl
Note the last portion about Load Balancing.
It basically associates a destination IP address with a connection, so you get some packets going out one interface and some going out another interface. Not the best solution, but Cable Modem and DSL providers aren't offering full BGP peering.
Could be worse! (Score:3, Funny)
I was thinking about this (Score:4, Informative)
In theory, this should give me a faster connection, that should withstand an outage of one of the two ISPs.
All I've done towards trying this out has been to get both a cable modem and a DSL connection. Right now, I have two NAT firewalls set up, and I have different boxes configured to use one or the other as the default route.
Even with a crude system like this for splitting the load over the connections, it still has been worth it to be able to run two scps at once when I have to upload a couple of hundred megs to my remote box.
Re:I was thinking about this (Score:5, Informative)
Multi-link PPP must be configured on both sides of the connection, you can't have Multi-link PPP to share a connection to two different ISPs.
Would would work is having a multi-homed host with 1 connection to the LAN and two to the internet. The NAT firewall would have to be configured with 2 external IP addresses and be programmed to load ballance.
Remember you will have 2 global IP addresses. This means that if you only have one connection open, only one of the links can be ever used. This is because of the way TCP works, it uses the global IP address to identify a connection. So it would not be possible to download a large file over both connections sumiltaniously.
Re:I was thinking about this (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I was thinking about this (Score:1)
Another solution... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Another solution... (Score:2)
No caps, same speeds up and down - the full amount the modem could handle, servers were encouraged, and they wanted us to push as many bits as we could.
I miss that - too bad I had to move...
Bridged ethernet. (Score:2)
They were fancy-ass cards though, and they needed the same kind of card on the other end. Not very usefull as a home solution, I guess.
You might consider going back to school and living in res....
Re:Bridged ethernet. (Score:3, Informative)
Whatever you do (Score:3, Informative)
=Smidge=
DSL can be faster (Score:2, Interesting)
The usual home connection is 1.2mbps down and 256k upload. Ive see SDSL thats 3.2 mbps up and 3.2 mbps download. Since this is theoretically faster than a T1 and cheap for not requiring a local loop + CSU/DSU, I'll say its worth the geek's craving. A T1 last time i checked was about $600 per month. This should be that price too but it gives more speed.
By simply getting a better upload speed, you'll notice a difference and major improvement.. eg 1.2/512 vs 1.2/128.
Thirdly.. just remember the time when 9600 bytes per second was good.. and cherish this connection. Remember when 14.4 modem was awesome?Remember the first time popping in windows 3.1 into the comp with a pile of floppies?? Take it from me man, leave the p2p crap alone, download stable versions instead of nightly snapshots and put your focus on your linux box.
Re:DSL can be faster (Score:2)
Re:DSL can be faster (Score:2)
It's not just the speed... (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using @home (now Shaw) in Vancouver for about 5 years. The last 2 years, I've also had ADSL. They are both business packages, but Shaw couldn't offer any kind of uptime guarantee.
In my area cable is twice as fast as DSL, but Shaw enforces download limits strictly, whereas Telus (phone co.) doesn't... at all. This is important to me for both my business and my personal usage/surfing habits.
When you're supporting clients remotely, telling them that you can't do much (or anything) for them because your connection is down doesn't cut it. When you're in the middle of a remote backup, VNC or SSH session adminning a client's box and all of a sudden everything stops, they don't care. They want the job done.
As fast as the cable is, it is also down more frequently than DSL. Here anyway. So I let my wife and kid run their boxes off it while I run primarily off DSL, switch or sharing as the need arises.
For what it's worth, I run 2 seperate trimmed down linux boxen as router/firewalls with SSH tunneling VNC for remote admin when I'm out, as well as NATing to internal boxes for web and mail services.
Box A: Cable: 2 NICs, 1 in, 1 out.
Box B: DSL: 3 NICs, 1 in, 1 out DSL, 1 out to 2nd Cable IP.
Dlink 10/100 24port Switch in the middle.
Since neither Shaw nor Telus have dropped simultaneously, I haven't been down in close to 2 years.
Call up and get a business account (Score:1, Informative)
Hint: business guys also get damned better service than home users when things go wrong.
Unless of course, you *aren't* willing to pay more, and were just looking for someone to post instructions on how to uncap your modem. In that case, fuck off.
Re:Call up and get a business account (Score:1)
You Might Not Want to do that. . . (Score:1)
Re:You Might Not Want to do that. . . (Score:2)
somewhere i read that the bandwdith used on the cable is 40mb/s. if that's so, you'd see some improvement on doing that.
of course, it wouldn't be any more stable...
Re:You Might Not Want to do that. . . (Score:2, Informative)
My Semi-Related Idea (Score:2)
I'm convinced that if Cogent ever starts providing lines in my area, I'd be able to do this without losing too much money. Has anyone tried anything of this sort?
Re:My Semi-Related Idea (Score:1)
Re:My Semi-Related Idea (Score:1)
Re:My Semi-Related Idea (Score:2)
why isn't it possible to use BGP?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The way TCP/IP was built you should be able to route any packet out any of the interfaces at any given time, this would give you the ability to balance load between lines, and the returning data would be coming back thru either of the given lines...
where's the technology to do this??
-b
Re:why isn't it possible to use BGP?? (Score:2)
First to use BGP you must have a block of 16 C class's (a
This is the smallest block that the internets border routers will 'see' a BGP route for.
Anything smaller will be ignored and you will not be able to reach those networks.
Next you need both ISPs to add your ASN number to their routers so the internet as a whole knows there are more than one route to you.
As i seriously doubt you have anything above a personal cable/dsl account, they are going to raise your rates accordingly.
In addition, you will most likely want two connections that are atleast a megabit in speed, as anything slower will make BGP routing table transfers/updates to your router a pain in the ass.
But it is technically possible with slower links.. It just takes alot more time and will be slow to respond to the global routing table changes.
You also need either a router or a PC router that can do BGP. BSD and linux can do this, so you wont need to buy a cisco capable of bgp, which is fortunate as they are usually rather pricy.
So for $2500
Have fun!
Re:why isn't it possible to use BGP?? (Score:2)
Actually, this isn't really true. Depending on where you are in the IPv4 namespace, you can get announcements as small as a /24 through backbone filters. Now, if you get space under the Swamp (below 192.0.0.0), you'll probably need the full /20. Otherwise, well, I've had single /24's be reachable from everywhere (in 216.249.0.0/16).
Of course, you don't really need that much space. Get two T1's (one from each of two providers), a /24 from one (or both), and cross-announce over BGP. Voila. Redundant links. Maybe not very well load balanced (depends on who your two providers are, and where your traffic goes), but redundant.
I'm Missing Something? (Score:3, Funny)
multiple dial-up connections? (Score:1)