FreeBSD router two DSL connections

[Eric F Crist]

On Dec 12, 2005, at 2:05 AM, Yance Kowara wrote:

> Ted,
>
> Thanks for the advice.
>
> A friend of mine has just acquired an Internet Cafe.
> The previous owner connected the lan to 2 different
> ADSL (two different ISPs) one is a back up he said.
>
> So, two ADSL routers with half the Lan connected to
> one router and another half to the other router.
>
> I am just thingking of a way to optimise the
> connection and came accross Steven's article. I
> thought I could do something similar with *BSD + pf.
>
> There is such thing as Dual Wan ADSL router:
> http://www.infosmart.com.tw/p-ndr3024.htm
>
> However, they are quite pricey compare to setting up a
> *BSD box (using old readily available hardware).
>
>
> So, if this load balancing idea does not work, any
> other thing I can do to optimise two DSLs?
>
> I also came accross this (linux way):
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Adv-Routing-HOWTO/lartc.rpdb.multiple- 
> links.html
>
> Is this worth trying?
>
> Kind regards,

Yance,

The reason, without a pretty heavily involved configuration, this  
won't work is packet routing.  Unless you're using BGP, Border  
Gateway Protocol, you're not going to reliably route return packets  
to any interface other than the interface it was transmitted from.   
I'm guessing that the dual-wan device you speak of handles some  
things differently.  Something like a large file download is going to  
fail to utilize the full bandwidth, however, because of the nature of  
the traffic.  If you really need to boost network bandwidth, you're  
going to be forced into either working directly with an ISP to link  
multiple DSL channels, or, more likely, obtain business-class service  
over a T1/T3 setup.

HTH
-----
Eric F Crist
Secure Computing Networks
http://www.secure-computing.net