Combining two internet connections?

[thecomputerguy]

I have a client who pays for a 16down/1up connection because it's the only thing available in their area. They use Dropbox for all file sharing and it absolutely kills the internet. They are working with large photos & CAD files.

ATT suggested that they get another internet connection and then hook up half the computers to one, and half to the other. Obviously this isn't going to work because half of the computers wont have access to the resources on the other half's network i.e. printers.

Is there a router that will take two WAN's and bond them together by taking two 10mpbs down connections effectively making it 20mbps?

 

[phaZed]

You can with Ubiquiti's routers and many others. Look for a "load balancing" option and/or "Failover".

The failover is only going to use a second connection if the first fails, but load balancing will balance your network WAN load. Some devices do this much better than others due to the way the actually perform load balancing (Round Robin, Intelligent, XOR). There are like 5-6 different established ways to load balance/failover.

 

[Markverhyden]

What is the the type service they have? The ideal solution is channel bonding. Generally that is only available via the ISP using upstream technology. But that is not available on all services. I did have one customer who did that with 10 T-1's until fiber came in.

 

[thecomputerguy]

What is the the type service they have? The ideal solution is channel bonding. Generally that is only available via the ISP using upstream technology. But that is not available on all services. I did have one customer who did that with 10 T-1's until fiber came in.

The only thing available to them is residential grade ATT DSL.

 

[trevm999]

Also make sure you're limiting the upload on the router so no one person can tank the connection, because 2mbps upload might nor be enough to fix the problem

 

[RoadRunner]

We do this a lot with Draytek routers. Have a client with a crap ADSL connection and we hooked up 4G via usb to the router. With the draytek we can specify that the server uses the ADSL connection (for off site backup) and the rest uses the faster 4G connection (sharepoint and O365).

 

[Moltuae]

Also make sure you're limiting the upload on the router so no one person can tank the connection, because 2mbps upload might nor be enough to fix the problem

This.

If it "kills the internet", it will likely be upload bandwidth saturation not download. It was a common problem back in the day when the use of torrents, eDonkey, etc where popular. Most filesharing clients had bandwidth limit settings for that reason. I believe Dropbox has a similar setting. Try lowering Dropbox's upload bandwidth limit on each PC. Alternatively, some routers, such as the DrayTek Vigors, enable you to set a maximum upload/download speed per session.

As Mark mentions, channel bonding (I think we tend to call it 'line bonding' in the UK) is the only real way to properly combine two connections but it's usually something only the ISP can do for you. Load balancing will give you the bandwidth of two or more connections to play with but it doesn't combine them like 'bonding' does. It effectively gives the highway more lanes. Each connection will still have its own public IP address because each internet session requires a single IP. It's only possible to receive data on the IP address that requested it, so a single download/upload session will only be able to use one 'lane' at a time.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

ATT suggested that they get another internet connection and then hook up half the computers to one, and half to the other. Obviously this isn't going to work because half of the computers wont have access to the resources on the other half's network i.e. printers.

Why wouldn't it work? You could just take half the computers and manually set their default gateway to one ISP, and point the other half of them towards the other ISP. This setup shouldn't stop the users from sharing resources, either, if set up correctly.

 

[brandonkick]

Second that.

There shouldn't be (or at least doesn't need to be) two separate networks.
Say for example you have two "gateway" devices from ATT (router / modem combo)....
You can just connect the from one LAN port to another on the gateways and then
just manually configure some portion of machines to the new "connections" default
gateway address. This doesn't allow any one user to utilize both lines, but it does
allow you to split half the people onto one connection and half onto the other.


However, as mentioned your really not seriously improving upon your existing upload
bandwidth. Sure, gaining 1 Mbps is a big deal when you only had 1 to begin with...
but it sounds like QoS is a much needed functionality. As mentioned, when you max
out the upstream the whole connection seems to slam into a wall. You want to set a
reasonable max per client / session so that one person can't hog it all and even if every
person were to be fully saturating all of their allotted bandwidth, you'd still have a bit
left over that no one could technically use.

 

[ZenTree]

What is the the type service they have? The ideal solution is channel bonding. Generally that is only available via the ISP using upstream technology. But that is not available on all services. I did have one customer who did that with 10 T-1's until fiber came in.

From experience working at an ISP, bonded solutions on ADSL products can be a nightmare when they go wrong but they are generally better than trying to just load balance.

As other people have pointed out, upstream is the issue. It's not going to fix your solution but if you can get Annex M enabled then you "may" see a notable increase upload speeds without the headache of a second line (still only talking about doubling your UP). This will come with a trade off with your downstream but not by much.

Another angle that no-one seems to have mentioned is do they need to be using dropbox? Do they have a lot of remote users? Could you instead look at a local solution (with remote access if required) and then backup overnight when saturating the connection won't be an issue.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Dont worry about bonding just limit the amount of upload per user, load balancing router would also help a little but i doubt it will resolve the issue since residential upload speeds kind of suck.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Many routers out there have multi WAN capabilities. From boxed units such as Draytek, or Cisco (Linksys) small business series "RV" models.They all work "OK".
There are some specific brands that specialize in multi WAN routers, such as Peplink ..really products.

And many *nix distros do it, Untangle does it VERY well.

There are pros and cons to multi WAN'ing a network. Failover is one thing...really only makes sense when you use different ISPs. But with load balancing...some routers are just OK with it, and others do much better. Much of it has to do with having the smarts to keep sessions on one particular WAN interface/IP. This is especially true with httpS sessions. If you're in the middle of an httpS session, such as with your bank, and the router switches which WAN port/IP you appear to come from, your httpS session will break and you'll have to log in again. Envision that scenario with all sorts of internet activity and usage. Email clients. Browsers. Various online apps, cloud apps, etc.

Also, don't fall into the trap of thinking that pairing two 6 meg DSL connections results in a 12 meg connection if you do online speed tests. What you get is a network that can handle more internet traffic than a single DSL connection...almost 12 megs worth..but no single session will peak faster than a single WAN connection. (so any online speed test of a pair of balance 6 meg pipes will still only peak at 6 megs)

An equal part of troubleshooting this from a performance perspective, is having a router with a good amount of horsepower, and lots of RAM, that can handle many concurrent sessions. I bet much of your clients issue stems from a router that is not capable of that. You'd be AMAZED at how much better the performance is if you're running behind a very capable firewall such as Untangle...with proper bandwidth management. I have a large accounting office on a single 3 meg bonded T1 line. Untangles bandwidth management can prioritize important traffic, and deprioritize less important traffic.

I bet your clients issue is due to a firewall that cannot do those important things. It's probably overwhelmed with more sessions than its memory and state table can handle, and it doesn't do well at QoS.

 

[fincoder]

You can just connect the from one LAN port to another on the gateways and then
just manually configure some portion of machines to the new "connections" default
gateway address.

I presume that in the second router DHCP would need to be disabled and the gateway IP changed from default? Has anyone seen this work?

I have a client (not managed) that uses skype or similar on each desktop for video calls, and has an office in another city. They had performance issues on their single ADSL connection, so the boss ordered two more! Now they have three seperate LANs and need to figure out how to share printers etc (all their data is in Google Drive so that's OK).

 

[freedomit]

We use Draytek internally and for clients. We have a EoFTTC 80/20 and a Cable 250/50 connection, we use the EoFTTC for servers, email, dns, vpn traffic and the cable for general internet surfing. Also with the router rules we have them automatically failover to each other if one goes down.

 

[Markverhyden]

If they are getting residential DSL they should be able to get business service. But channel bonding cost is not ISP service price x 2. What have you done with evaluating their business practices? As mentioned Dropbox can easily tank a low quality connection. What is the ratio of LAN vs WAN use of Dropbox? Who/what/how is WAN access used?

There are plenty of self hosted files sharing services that operate like Dropbox. I use FreeNAS. If most is on the LAN side then a local solution makes sense. The outbound pipe is the problem since with Cloud systems every local endpoint is choking the out pipe every time they touch a file.

 

[fencepost]

(deleted my original comment after digging the below up)

Can you check to see if Dropbox LAN Sync is working for them? Also see LAN Sync not working (with a solution).

Related, LAN Sync does not appear to exist in OneDrive based on comments in the past few weeks: https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/6327930-syncing-over-lan

Search results and some commentary from a year or two back imply that it's not in Google Drive and apparently not a priority.

As of last year, this was not in Box, plus "do not manually migrate content" because it'll create duplicates instead of detecting the existing files: https://community.box.com/t5/Box-Troubleshooting-Forum/LAN-sync-Copy-the-files-over/td-p/17003

 

[brandonkick]

I presume that in the second router DHCP would need to be disabled and the gateway IP changed from default? Has anyone seen this work?

I have a client (not managed) that uses skype or similar on each desktop for video calls, and has an office in another city. They had performance issues on their single ADSL connection, so the boss ordered two more! Now they have three seperate LANs and need to figure out how to share printers etc (all their data is in Google Drive so that's OK).

I haven't done it personally... but yes you would only want one device doing DHCP.

I would also assume, that normally... each "gateway" device (modem/router combo) has the same default gateway as any other product they ship. If one of them is 10.0.0.1, I'd assume by default the second and third gateways default gateway IP would be the same.

I'm not sure if you can configure that on the gateway device itself or not. I never tried, so I don't know....

There are better ways to do it, this (if it would fully work in theory, the only snag being configuring the default gateway on each of the gateway devices) would be a less expensive up front cost solution. Proper hardware that supports more than one WAN connection does exist, and seems to be a better solution in most cases.

 

[SAFCasper]

Sounds a lot like our workshop!

We get about 17Mb/1Mb ADSL with no faster options available. We started using VOIP phones and found they got a bit unstable at times due to lack of bandwidth... especially when our web guy was uploading big files.

So we ordered a second line and use a Draytek Vigor 2860 with load balancing. Besides the sever everything is automatically assigned which WAN it uses. Also configured some QoS and Bandwidth management to prevent a single device hogging it all.

Wouldn't say it's perfect and I would much prefer a single 34/2 line (double) -- but it has made a big improvement.


Luckily we are getting FTTC enable by December 31... although we were originally told March 2015 and they just keep moving it back every time the date gets near

 

[fincoder]

I haven't done it personally...

Anyone else here tried connecting two consumer-grade routers to each other via their LAN ports to allow two gateway choices on a single LAN?

 

[Moltuae]

Anyone else here tried connecting two consumer-grade routers to each other via their LAN ports to allow two gateway choices on a single LAN?

I haven't done it with 2 consumer-grade routers but I frequently do it with one consumer-grade router and a business-grade router, usually with the LAN ports connected to a common network switch.

Whenever I upgrade a business customer's network to business/enterprise-grade equipment, this is my preferred migration method, in order to minimise downtime and disruption. I initially connect the new business-grade router using different subnets and without DHCP. I then migrate devices and computers over, one at time, using static IP addresses (and, where necessary, secondary IP addresses and static routes, to enable communication between subnets). Once everything is migrated over to the new subnets, I disable DHCP on the old router (or disconnect it) and enable DHCP on the new router (or preferably a server).