Combine ISP's for more speed?

[Cybergooch]

I currently am subscribed to two different ISP's as I want to do some speed testing between them and make a decision as to which to go with.

One is DSL, and I get an average of 2000 kb/s down and 500 up.
The other is a wireless line of sight dish/receiver, and it averages 1800 kb/s down, but 1400 up.

I got to wondering if there's a way to somehow combine the two services on my system, so that I could be using both at the same time for increased speed.

Is such a thing possible?

Thanks...

 

[Anti-Trend]

Yes, in fact I'm doing something similar, since I got stuck with two subscriptions on two different ISPs. I chose to go with pfSense 1.2.2, running on a dual-P3 Dell workstation my work was throwing out. I just dropped a few $5 NICs in there, installed pfSense, and setup a load-balanced multi-WAN setup with failover. Once configured, not only will it use both connections for speed, in the case of a failure of one WAN connection it will automatically cut over to the working one. I'd recommend it.

 

[Cybergooch]

Thanks for the reply...I'll check out pfSense.

 

[Cybergooch]

Well I checked out pfSense, and to be honest, it sounds like it's all way over my head. :)

So it has to be installed on a dedicated box? I suppose I could go that route if I cobbled together an older system with spare parts. Would there be any advantage to that over getting a dual-wan router?

Thanks...

 

[Anti-Trend]

Well I checked out pfSense, and to be honest, it sounds like it's all way over my head. :)

The interface for pfSense is pretty straight-forward for a router, but I suppose it does require some networking knowledge, as with any sufficiently advanced network appliance. No offense intended of course. :) And multi-WAN routing is somewhat complicated in nature, which can't be avoided unless you want to forgo this operation entirely.

So it has to be installed on a dedicated box?

Yes, it's a FreeBSD-based firewall distribution. The installation is quite simple and menu-driven though, so you don't necessarily need any experience with FreeBSD to succeed. But dedicated hardware is definitely required, with at least 3 network interfaces for what you want to accomplish. Hardware requirements - PFSenseDocs

I suppose I could go that route if I cobbled together an older system with spare parts. Would there be any advantage to that over getting a dual-wan router?

Several, especially if you already have the parts. Cost being foremost, as it can save you several hundred in the currency of your choice. Also, flexibility and performance. A lot of small appliances can't handle a lot of throughput plus firewalling, let alone from multiple links.

 

[Cybergooch]

The interface for pfSense is pretty straight-forward for a router, but I suppose it does require some networking knowledge, as with any sufficiently advanced network appliance. No offense intended of course. :) And multi-WAN routing is somewhat complicated in nature, which can't be avoided unless you want to forgo this operation entirely.

No offense taken, heh... I think you've confirmed my fears that I shouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. I know just enough to be dangerous, and don't want to spend the next 3 months on forums begging people that actually know what they're doing to help me dig my way out of a hole.

Several, especially if you already have the parts. Cost being foremost, as it can save you several hundred in the currency of your choice. Also, flexibility and performance. A lot of small appliances can't handle a lot of throughput plus firewalling, let alone from multiple links.

Sounds like a dual-wan router isn't as flexible or powerful, but I don't think I have much choice. I'm considering:

Peplink Balance 20L
Netgear FVS336G
XINCOM XC-DPG502
LINKSYS RV042/RV082

and I'm still looking around. The only reason I'm even thinking about this is because of the two different available ISP's I currently have. I don't know how much of a real-world speed increase I would get by combining the two. Some people say a lot, some say not much. Obviously, if the source is the bottleneck, I can't improve speeds on my end. However, most times I'm downloading files it's from sites that allow multiple (threaded) downloads, and some newsgroup readers do also. Am I wrong to assume that I would get increased download speeds by combining ISP's for such tasks?

Thanks...

 

[Anti-Trend]

Well, it sounds like you've got the impression that a network appliance will somehow be easier for you than building a pfSense-based appliance. In reality, there isn't much difference in terms of skill requirements. In either case we're talking about deploying a multi-wan router with some sort of policy-based routing setup so that your traffic goes out through one or both interfaces, depending on the situation. pfSense has a web-based interface just like the other routers you've listed; probably a better one in many cases. But no matter how you approach the issue, you'll probably need to learn a few new concepts along the way.

About multi-WAN speed... It is beneficial for page load times on certain sites where content loads from multiple locations in parallel, a good example being Amazon. Also, any download utilities that allow multiple simultaneous connections to the same file will benefit greatly from a load-balanced multi-WAN. On the other hand, normal surfing, gaming, and things like streaming video will not benefit directly from such a setup. Probably the biggest advantage is failover capabilities gained from having two connections, so that if one connection goes down or becomes too crowded, new connections are pushed to the other.

 

[Cybergooch]

Well, it sounds like you've got the impression that a network appliance will somehow be easier for you than building a pfSense-based appliance. In reality, there isn't much difference in terms of skill requirements. In either case we're talking about deploying a multi-wan router with some sort of policy-based routing setup so that your traffic goes out through one or both interfaces, depending on the situation. pfSense has a web-based interface just like the other routers you've listed; probably a better one in many cases. But no matter how you approach the issue, you'll probably need to learn a few new concepts along the way.

Yeah, I will have to learn some new things, which will probably be good for me anyway. But I think I'll run into fewer headaches with an out-of-the-box solution than with something I've cobbled together myself, especially with my limited knowledge. I build my own systems, but the networking side is complete Greek to me.

About multi-WAN speed... It is beneficial for page load times on certain sites where content loads from multiple locations in parallel, a good example being Amazon. Also, any download utilities that allow multiple simultaneous connections to the same file will benefit greatly from a load-balanced multi-WAN. On the other hand, normal surfing, gaming, and things like streaming video will not benefit directly from such a setup. Probably the biggest advantage is failover capabilities gained from having two connections, so that if one connection goes down or becomes too crowded, new connections are pushed to the other.

That makes sense. So it sounds like I will see speed increases for multi-threaded downloading (which I'd love to have for newsgroups especially) but not much improvement in other areas. I can live with that. The failover would be quite nice too. It doesn't sound like it would help me much though with VPN speeds. (I work with a company in another city, and most of my work is uploading and downloading lots of data through the company VPN.) If I'm up or downloading through that, will dual wan help at all?

Also, I currently have a Linksys WRT54G which provides the wireless signal to game consoles and the kid's computers. Would I be able to plug that into the dual-wan as one of the outputs since some of the dual-wan routers don't have wireless built in?

Thanks

 

[Anti-Trend]

Yeah, I will have to learn some new things, which will probably be good for me anyway. But I think I'll run into fewer headaches with an out-of-the-box solution than with something I've cobbled together myself, especially with my limited knowledge. I build my own systems, but the networking side is complete Greek to me.

I can understand why you're apprehensive, but as long as you know how to put an x86 PC together and the hardware is stable, I don't see the disadvantage. Either way you're going to be dealing with multi-WAN routing, but suit yourself. Keep in mind however that each of the devices you've listed have their own proprietary ways of doing things. If you run into trouble, we may not be able to help you; you'll likely have to call the respective company's helpdesk for support. That may be a feature you were looking for in the first place though, so I won't digress any further on this point. On the other hand, you will also have to shop carefully if you want both failover and load balancing, since many multi-WAN routers will only do one or the other.

That makes sense. So it sounds like I will see speed increases for multi-threaded downloading (which I'd love to have for newsgroups especially) but not much improvement in other areas. I can live with that. The failover would be quite nice too. It doesn't sound like it would help me much though with VPN speeds. (I work with a company in another city, and most of my work is uploading and downloading lots of data through the company VPN.) If I'm up or downloading through that, will dual wan help at all?

No, a multi-WAN setup won't help at all through a VPN. But depending on the device you choose, it may or may not give you failover redundancy in the case that one link drops.

Also, I currently have a Linksys WRT54G which provides the wireless signal to game consoles and the kid's computers. Would I be able to plug that into the dual-wan as one of the outputs since some of the dual-wan routers don't have wireless built in?

In my case, I use a layer-2 gigabit switch behind my firewall to provide connectivity between my LAN segment and my firewall, and a WRT-54GL on a separate segment of my network for security. I suppose if you don't want to isolate your wireless network from your wired network, you could just throw your wireless router behind your wired one. See the attached topology diagram for an example of what I mean.