Getting second broadband modem - suggestions or networking ideas?

[tankman1989]

I have a problem with bandwidth capacity with my residential cable modem and the choice was to buy their $190/month commercial account or to go with a competitor who was running a great promotion with another service that I wanted. So this is now what I have:

15/2MB Down/Up Cable Modem with a 250GB cap (used to watch TV and movies a lot (found Netflix HD gobbles up LOTS of bandwidth. Price $67.99

10/2 Down/Up Commercial DSL w/ Business phone unlimited - non-metered - $79.99 for 2 years.

I'm trying to figure out how to integrate these two modems into one network and I already have 3 routers running DD-WRT on them, so if need be, I can use that to direct traffic.

I may be hooking up a VoIP PBX which might go to the DSL connection and use the cable modem for surfing, downloading, etc if that is poosible. Is it possible to direct utorrent to use a specific router or modem?

Any liturature on doing this?

 

[phaZed]

Check out "load balancing" routers... will take two ISPs. If you want to learn Cisco IOS, a few Cisco 2600 routers and a switch will get you there too.

 

[angry_geek]

This would be a good opportunity to learn. Grab an old machine, slap in a second nic, and download clearos.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I believe something like this would work as well http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124160

 

[angry_geek]

Sorry. You'll need three nics, not two. But it will be a good experience.

 

[ShinyTech]

Yea either two network cards bridged or a router that can take two modems connected to it. The router might be expensive tho. I dont know if its cable modems but if it is, get DOCSIS 3 modems on both ISP's as it will give you a huge speed boost. I know when I got mine it gave me about 10-15 mbps more then I had before.

 

[ElementalWindX]

I have pfsense setup at several different locations performing various forms of fail over and round robin load balancing flawlessly. Much better than clearos or any other free option.

For your solution i would use a weighted round robin setup of a weight of 2 to 5 . 2 being on the capped connection. Then you could setup rules for certain services to use certain internet connections at all times

 

[altrenda]

+1 to pfSense. free, works fine on a Pentium 4 or Atom, great community support. As easy or complicated as you need it to be.

 

[paristotle]

I looked into this a while ago I didn't end up having to use it, but I found out that you can configure DD-WRT to handle two WAN connections and do the load balancing. Check out this article.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Dual_WAN_with_failover

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

PFSense.

DD-WRT probably means home grade hardware...time to step up a notch.
And if this is important..like a business network, kill torrent junk. Just hogs bandwidth (actually...kills performance by sucking up sessions, so crushes routers with smaller state tables) and invites problems via "poisoned content".

 

[paristotle]

PFSense.

DD-WRT probably means home grade hardware...time to step up a notch.
And if this is important..like a business network, kill torrent junk. Just hogs bandwidth (actually...kills performance by sucking up sessions, so crushes routers with smaller state tables) and invites problems via "poisoned content".

Quite right. I just thought I would mention it since he already seems to have the hardware.