Load-balancing: I'm lost and I need some help, please.

[davethebossman]

I'm calling on the advanced networkers to help me. I am tired of scourging the web for answers on load-balancing setups when i don't even understand the principles myself. So i'm needing some help to design a system at home for myself using load-balancing.

I have two identical 25Mbps ADSL2+ connections (from Telus Communications) in my house, and i'm looking to bond these lines into one large 50Mbps connection using load-balancing. I do NOT want these connections to be a failover setup or a dual-connection setup; i want the wireless router to see ONE connection. I believe this means implementing a per-packet-load-balancing design, but i could be wrong. Please advise.

I am willing to entertain the idea of a dual-ADSL2+ modem, a custom Linux mini-PC, a DD-WRT router, anything in order to produce this load-balancing condition. I am not knowledgeable with Linux but i'm good enough with Windows machines to fix almost any issue, so i can learn Linux.

Please, no one give me the "switch ISP" comment, and please don't give me the "it can't be done" comment either. I believe this forum is filled with extremely intelligent individuals (or friends of friends), but i needed to make that disclaimer anyways. Thank you in advance for your help. I look forward to your suggestions.

David H

 

[stevech]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-howto/30556-how-to-set-up-switch-link-aggregation

perhaps use
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124160&Tpk=RV042

 

[GregN]

Here is the problem that load balancing two connections has:

Connection 1: IP ADDRESS A
Connection 2: IP ADDRESS B

If you create a session with a website using Connection 1, and subsequent packets come from Connection 2, it is from different IP Address, and the session will be invalidated.

To solve this problem load balancing routers create a "Smart Session" meaning all traffic once created on either Connection 1 or 2 will stay on that Connection for the life of the session. This makes true load balancing difficult, in a packet round robin fashion. This also means that a single session can not utilize bandwidth beyond that of one connection.

Load balancing uses a stateful or stateless algorithm, stateful load balancing or intelligent load balancing looks at the load on each interface when deciding which connection to assign a new session to. Stateless is generally round robin, and it just assigns the session to whichever is next in line - there is also weighted round robin, which will take into consideration connection speed differentials.

Understanding these limitations, you can build your own router which provides load balancing across multiple connections, it is easy, and well documented here, my personal favorite is pfSense.

If you want to go consumer routers, Cradlepoint, Draytek & Zykel provide multi-wan load balancing routers. Draytek seems to be the more favored.

If you want to go commercial, the evil empire, Cisco, is a choice but is expensive. The commercial routers are where you are most likely to find intelligent load balancing.

Hope this helps.

 

[sfx2000]

I think the OP is looking for Link Aggregation - binding two pipes to one, not load balancing.

The bind can happen, but this needs to be done on both side of the link - The Telus DSLAM at the CO, as well as on the OP's side. Most DSL providers can't or won't do this for a residential account. For business accounts, it really depends on the provider, and their core networking configurations.

FWIW - Link Aggregation is Layer 2 (the data link layer in the OSI 7 layer model) - Load Balancing is at the Layer 4 (the transport layer).

Load Balancing is still a good approach, but remember any single connection will be at the base speed, not 2x... you should see a general speed up and perhaps better utilization - the fault tolerance and link redundancy are the major benefits of load balancing.

 

[stevech]

does any consumer type ISP sell support for Link Aggregation at their end?

 

[sfx2000]

That's a good question - in my experience, it's a case by case scenario. It doesn't hurt to ask as many providers do offer tiered $ervice$...

 

[davethebossman]

You guys have been SOOOO helpful! Thank you for your timely and informed responses! If there is a way for me to provide a site donation or some form of assistance in exchange for your knowledge/time, please make me aware of it. It is a rare but appreciated quality to share your wisdom with random internet folks like myself.

I agree that link aggregation will be my first route of implementation, so I will contact my ISP and see if they will allow this. I've got a field tech contact that might be able to help me, and i've actually got my DSLAM only 1 block away so this might allow better chance for aggregation. Furthermore, the two connections were an agreement between Telus and I in an effort to provide speeds as capable as their competitor ISP, so this new info might give me more leverage.

If i must fall back onto load balancing implementation, I DO like the idea of pfSense with a custom router. However, the executive office (my lovely young wife) will have to okay that decision at the next board meeting ;-)
And if the exec doesn't like this investment, i will probably move into the commercial router market. That Cisco was already in my sights (RV042) but i wasn't sure if it did the "smart routing" as you've been describing. I'm aware that Cisco was flaunting their load-balancing features on their site, but I wasn't sure if their design used the correct type for my needs.

Again, thank you for your help. And i would ESPECIALLY like to thank stevech, GregN, and sfx2000 for a breakdown of the principles here. I'm grateful that i can actually take some new understanding away from this thread. I will report soon. Have a great weekend!

Dave H

 

[sfx2000]

Tell them you want "Bonded DSL" - providers do offer this, and you will need specific premises equipment on your end that they likely will provide - you'll have an ethernet connection and a single IP...

Zyxel is a vendor that offers bonded ADSL2+ CPE... there are others I'm sure of...

Best of luck - the best way to contribute back to the community is to share your experience

 

[kc6108]

We use a Cisco SA540 which has dual WAN ports. It has load balancing and failover capabilities, but they both can't be turned on at the same time. I believe the RV042 works the same way. FYI, load balancing will yield higher throughput, just not exactly double like channel bonding will get you. Just my $.02 in case you end out going with a Cisco SMB router.

 

[GregN]

I think the OP is looking for Link Aggregation - binding two pipes to one, not load balancing.

Sorry, I saw this and should have mentioned that link aggregation was highly unlikely for residential - that the ISP has to have equipment that will do 802.1ad on their end...and be willing to configure it for you.

PFSense will run on most anything, you can use an old machine, you just have to have at least two NICs (and probably a $20 switch for port expansion). With it you also get a bunch of security features for free, Snort intrusion detection, SPI NAT/Firewall, Caching Proxy*, Perimeter Antivirus*, unlimited State Table, and performance only limited by the hardware.

(*)not multi-wan compatible for HTTP

You can turn your old router into a wireless access point to provide wireless access, so no loss there.

PFSense is also incredibly easy to install, and configure - all double plus good.

 

[stevech]

If cable modem service is available, you'll get better speeds with it than two DSLs (bonded), I think. Mine measures with Speedtest at 20-30Mbps down and 1Mbps up. If I pay more for DOCSIS 3, this goes to 40-50Mbps down and something faster up.

I dumped AT&T for POTS, and went with the package from TimeWarner: HDTV, digital phone (it's wireline quality/reliability), and cable modem-internet.

Wish the bundle would cost less. But Dish/Direct TV isn't cheaper. And after these years with cable modem (DOCSIS 2) I'm spoiled with the speed.

 

[davethebossman]

Hi, stevech;

I know i am capable of getting cable speeds up to 250Mbps, but my ISP has struck a VERY good deal with me. I'm getting (if bonded) 50Mbps down and 6Mbps up for $54/mth; that means i'm getting one of my DSL lines for free (according to regular pricing in a bundle) and paying less $/Mbps than my cable ISP can give me. Plus, i am mostly concerned with the excellent download:upload ratio i'll have... anything lower than a 10:1 ratio is basically bottleneck-free with respect to data traffic. Plus my average ping is lower than 20ms with very low jitter and no packet loss.

This post wasn't necessary, just letting people know my situation. Plus being bundled with home phone, internet, and mobile phones with the same company has proven very effective for negotiations in our services.

Dave H

 

[stevech]

Bonded DSL seems odd to me vs. DOCSIS.

I pay much less than $54/mo for cable modem DOCSIS 2.
DOCSIS 3 which is said to be 50Mbps down and ?Mbps up is about the price you quote.

250Mbps is more than I think any residential ISP provides. I don't think even FIOS is that fast. You might get it for hundreds of $/mo from a metro-Ethernet provider.

 

[davethebossman]

Hello, all;

I called my ISP asking about Bonded-DSL and so far i've got "no we don't do that" and "I'm not sure what you're talking about". I'm not discouraged about that because i have yet to speak with a field technician (appointment this Saturday) who actually knows his network. The reps on the phone often confuse policy limitations with infrastructure limitations because they haven't been told the difference.

But for now I wanted to clarify something. If i put together a custom router rig, i'll still need to use two of my ISP's modems UNLESS i use this...

http://linitx.com/product/12181

They also have a 2-port model, but I think two separate 1-port devices would allow pfSense etc to have more control. Then I don't even need a modem followed by an ethernet pci card. One less peripheral to travel through, and apparently most computers recognize this as a NIC anyways. What do you think of this option?? Personally I was encouraged to see this cause I might not even need any external modems!

I need a further clarification, please. If my ISP cannot provide me with a bonded-DSL solution, would two of these ADSL2+ pci cards be able to accomplish a link aggregation on their own? Or do I still require changes to be made at my DSLAM/CO? I really want an aggregated internet connection instead of dual-internet...

Thanks again for all your help, members. Oh and a note, stevech, Shaw Communications apparently has North America's fastest internet plans to a majority of Canadian residential addresses. I looked at their cable 250Mbps plan and it's $125 per month in major cities. And they offer 1Gbps in certain major cities (like the newer areas of my city) using Fiber To The Place.

Please advise on ADSL2+ PCI ideas. My fingers are crossed!

David H

 

[stevech]

I understand that Link Aggregation requires cooperating equipment on both ends.

Nice premium speed offering from your cable co.
Would one of their lesser tiers of service meet your needs?

 

[teknojnky]

There are alot of terms floating around that most people thing are all synonmous, but really are not.

Dual/multi wan - having 2 or more WAN (internet) connections, often used in failover type scenarios. Alot of people expect to get double (or combined) amount of peak bandwidth. In reality, you only get the bandwidth of the WAN connection currently in use.

link-aggrated, like lacp/802.3, increases the bandwidth over multiple simultanious connections, however any single connection (ie download) will only ever use the bandwidth of the single connection. Multiple connections (ie multiple downloads) can use separate connections, giving each download a full pipes worth of bandwith. This normally used in higher end gbit and 10gbit switches, not for internet connections.

BONDED - this almost always has to occur on the ISP side, this typically involves multiple DSL or T1 loops and special customer premise equipment and special collo equipment. Each of the dsl/t1 loops are bonded at both ends (in the collo and at the customer prem) to present one single aggragate connection to the user/customer.

see for example, ethernet over copper http://www.adtran.com/web/page/portal/Adtran/group/445

I work at a company which provides EOC (ethernet over copper) services, which involve 2 to 8 dsl loops, which plug into the adtran "CPE" at the end user premisis and TA5000 (aggregator) at the collo.

The amount of bandwidth available is dependent on the dsl loop quality and length from collo, and how many loops.

short distances can easily get 25meg per loop, down to 512k or so for distances 12k or so. Multiply that by up to 8 loops, and you can get a lot of bandwidth for relatively inexpensive copper loops (as opposed to expensive t1 loops).

These type of services are mostly marketed at small/medium businesses, not consumer/residential uses, it will probably be difficult to find unless you look at business level ISP's and services.

 

[kc6108]

That's why I suggested that the OP get a SMB router (such as a Cisco SA540) that provides dual-WAN capabilities.

An SA540 can either be used in fail-over mode, which isn't really of any benefit to him (if one of his connections goes down more than likely the other one will too ), or it can used in load-balancing mode.

Using a simple speed test won't yield double the speed because it's a single connection as you pointed out. But there are several ways that it will help him out tremendously (i.e. with torrents, multiple devices connected, not to mention multiple downloads, gaming... the list goes on and on).

I mention the SA540 because we have one. They sell on for eBay for $200-450 all the time. I got one for our house (brand new with warranty) for $200.

 

[GregN]

I looked at the ADSL cards before, and the settings appear touchy, but people have gotten them to run (Google pfsense adsl cards). They appear to be more popular in Britain. I'd make sure there are FreeBSD drivers for the card/chipset you select

Couple questions though, I presume your ISP provides the modems as part of the service, buying cards to replace something you are paying for anyways, why? Or do you have to pay for the modems separately?

Second, using NICs is fairly straight forward ( recommend Intel Pro ), and has the added advantage of being transportable to other services. Do you see your self sticking with ADSL for a long period of time, not changing?

 

[davethebossman]

Hi, GregN;

My searches for PCI adsl modems has also shown a lot of UK discussion. But as long as they're also using ADSL2+, are there really THAT many differences that can exist between UK and Canadian ISPs?

As far as the modems... my ISP (Telus) gives out the JUNKIEST router/modem combo devices. While it's true they are mine to use for free, the firmwares are soooooo crippled that you can't even put the device (Actiontec V1000H) into modem-only mode. My ISP has crippled them so that no one is able to use third-party routers, thereby eliminating the need to support peoples' tech problems. And possibly more important, Telus has moved their support call centre to the Philippines where LITERALLY 98% of "tech support" doesn't know as much as my wife... nevermind me.

So the only options for modem-only devices is for me to hack their routers and disable TR069 remote upgrade options (i've done this on one device, the newer V100H's won't even allow a firmware upgrade except by TR069!!), then I can switch to modem-only mode. But this is NOT a good solution. So it sounds like i'll have to spend $60-80 and go get some cheap ADSL2+ modems online. Any suggestions there?

So, why would I buy my own ADSL2+ PCI cards? As mentioned above, PCI cards are simple and compact, aren't terribly expensive, and can be easily replaced when newer PCI cards become available. And my crappy routers from the ISP explain why i'm pursuing third-party modems in the first place.

Last thing, GregN. I'm actually not sticking to ADSL2+ hard and fast. I find it to be much more reliable and consistent than cable. **Before anyone contests this, please note that we commonly attribute Shaw's cable to be fast yet highly inconsistent, and Telus' adsl to be slow and highly consistent**. If Shaw offered upload in the vicinity of 5Mbps then I would be fine with switching. And you know what, I've also been searching around for DOCSIS 3.0 PCI cards also.

I just like the compact idea of PCI modem cards, either using ADSL or DOCSIS. And they can be easily replaced! If it's really not worth my trouble, then perhaps I will just use external modems. One point I should also bring up is that my local geek shops have also agreed that I should stick with Intel NICs and stay away from Realtek NICs. So thank you, GregN for your suggestion there as well.

Again, my field tech is coming on Saturday so I should have more definitive answers by that time. Thanks again for everyone's help here. Have a good week/wknd!

Dave H

 

[davethebossman]

Hello, again.

So I just had my Telus tech visit my premise to discuss bonding DSL lines. According to him and his instructors, Telus does not have the infrastructure to bond DSL lines, neither in residential nor business sectors.

Telus actually sucks HUGE. They are terrible. They are about as diverse as Apple... as in not at all. They are strictly a reactive business, so they only like making "safe moves" which have already been proven effective by other telecom providers. At that point, they just use their monopolistic resources to out-compete other ISPs. Shaw Cable -however cheap and useless they might be- are highly proactive and constantly push to provide new and demanding services. As an example, to date the BEST connection Telus Business offers is a 15/1 ADSL connection, whereas Shaw Business offers many 100's of Mbps in many combinations. This is but a taste of the ridiculous, out-dated, limited, and poorly-managed services that Telus sells for overtly expensive prices. It is robbery. And their wireless services are defined in the dictionary as "rape".

WAKE UP, TELUS!!!! YOU ARE GOING DOWN LIKE RiM BECAUSE YOU ARE GARBAGE!!!!

K my rant is done. After many hours of research, deliberation, and phone calls, I've chosen my paths. I MAY consider purchasing a Zyxel multi-WAN router and going for a load-balanced 2x ADSL2+ connection, but it seems more likely I will simply go for a DOCSIS 3.0 Shaw Cable connection and buy their 50/5 package. If i beg and plead with Shaw, hopefully i can get their 50/5 for about $50 a month.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the members of smallnetbuilder for offering all their wisdom at the drop of a hat. For someone like myself who wants to learn more and more about networking, I am grateful to have found a forum where REAL answers exist. And with hospitality, too! Thank you all. If i decide on a linux router anyways (because i LOOOOOVE to tinker) then I will most certainly post a huge write up of the project. Thanks again!

David H