Two modems for a single WLAN possible?

[huluvu]

hi there,

i've just finished setting up a wireless network for our house (approx. 20 people connect to the network).

it consists of a modem, a router and two repeaters (to extend the signal to the distant floors and rooms).

after a few days of using the network and the shared internet connection, we realized that a single 50mbit line is not enough to supply 20 people with a decent bandwidth.

my idea (and my question to you):
since the single internet line is the clear bottleneck, it seems logical to me to just add a second line... for load balancing purposes. ideally, it should still be a single wireless network so that every client can see everybody's shares, printers, hard drives on the network. is this possible?

i've read about a dual wan router like the cisco RV042 –*would this suit my needs? after all, i'd prefer to not add a new device except for a second modem to my network, if possible.

please see the attached images for more information about how i configured my network.

thank you!!

 

[teknojnky]

my idea (and my question to you):
since the single internet line is the clear bottleneck,

really? how have you determined this? I would expect it more likely that with 20 clients, your wireless is more congested than your internet link.

it seems logical to me to just add a second line... for load balancing purposes.

While seemingly logical, load balancing increases your network complexity greatly.

ideally, it should still be a single wireless network so that every client can see everybody's shares, printers, hard drives on the network.is this possible?

Load balancing is certainly possible, but you would need a router that supports 2 WAN interfaces and can load balance between them.

No, no you can not simply add a second modem to a router which is only designed for a single wan.

Also no, you can not simply add a second modem to one of the other airports to 'load balance'.

Although, I suppose it is possible to change the default gateway of some of the computers to point to the airport with the 2nd modem instead of the default gateway of the 1st modem.

 

[huluvu]

hi teknojnky,

i have to be honest: i didn't really check whether my wireless or my internet line is the bottleneck. i'm still pretty sure though that the 50mbit line has reached its limits since there isn't a lot of filesharing going on between the computers of my neighbours – most of them don't even know how to setup filesharing on their machine

would you say it's possible for me to include a Cisco RV042 into my network configuration? since it offers two WAN ports, it could theoretically handle the load balancing for all the attached client computers.

if yes, where should it be included? i presume it should sit between the modem(s) and the airport extreme router (the one that creates the wifi signal). will the cisco 2xWAN router output a "normal" / "unified" connection to the airport extreme device and will it be able to "understand" the dual WAN signal?

thanks a lot for your answers!

 

[rahuljawale]

would you say it's possible for me to include a Cisco RV042 into my network configuration? since it offers two WAN ports, it could theoretically handle the load balancing for all the attached client computers.

Yes, you may use Cisco RV042 to load balance between two connections.

if yes, where should it be included? i presume it should sit between the modem(s) and the airport extreme router (the one that creates the wifi signal). will the cisco 2xWAN router output a "normal" / "unified" connection to the airport extreme device and will it be able to "understand" the dual WAN signal?

You are correct.

I would recommend that you let Airport Xtreme router handle DHCP tasks. That may reduce some of the latency issues on your network.

 

[Guz]

You might be better off using a PC, than a trying to find a router that has load balancing, for costs.

That is, get a PC with 3 separate gigabit NIC's. 2 NIC's to load balance to two modems, and the third to be your internal connection to a switch/wireless AP. Have it act as your router, firewall, DNS, DHCP server.

I'm sure there is a some flavor of Linux out there for this type of setup. Worst case, you could use W2K8R2 (hey, I did say "worst case").

But the key would be 3 separate NIC's on a fast bus, and making sure what-ever operating system that you use, has drivers for the NIC's that are capable teaming.

Way-back-when, this was how some of us use to do things, before dedicated networking devices were available (minus network teaming).

If it doesn't work out, you would end with a PC that could act as a NAS, or a media server, teaming all three NICs into one big fat pipe, with some fat hard drives attached

 

[GregN]

( Did I hear someone cue me? )

Yes, building your own router offer better throughput, Dual WAN, load balancing, plus something you probably haven't considered, a high speed caching proxy server ( multiple folks visiting the same website over and over, like face book? the static element of a website are stored locally on disk ).

You can convert an old PC, and use your current routers for wireless AP and range extension. You'll probably need a few switches to use as port expanders.

Take a look at This Article, and Dennis Wood's excellent sticky forum threads on PFSense. PFSense is a free router distro of BSD.

Version 2, which has now been released, has all of the needed pieces and parts to address your concerns, Dual/Triple WAN, Load Balancing, Traffic Shaping/QOS, and Squid as a High Performance Proxy. In addition you can optionally add anti-virus at your perimeter, and Intrusion detection for better security over all.

As to NICs, Go with Intel, it is a no brainer.

Let us know what you do, we can help.

 

[huluvu]

Hey guys, thanks for your answers so far!

It's really motivating to see that by either using a dual WAN router or a self built custom PFSense machine could in fact help me with getting rid off the internet bottleneck.

To be honest, I want to avoid building a custom PC because I really like the convenience of dedicated networking hardware. Also, stuff like security and proxy features would be a nice bonus, but by no means necessary for our usage habits.

At around 120€, the Cisco RV042 seems like a decent solution for stuffing two incoming VDSL internet lines into a single network.

However, I noticed that it lacks Gigabit Ports both on the WAN and the LAN ports. Seeing that my internet lines are VDSL (offering up to 50MBit downstream each), the 100MBit nature of the Cisco's ports could turn out to be the next bottleneck.

I found the Netgear FVS336G which costs around 180€ and is an all Gigabit machine.

Do you think it would be worth to buy the Netgear instead of the Cisco?


Also, please have a look at the attached graphic where I tried to visualize my future configuration – if the connection between the modems and the dual WAN router is 100MBit Ethernet, does it affect the performance between the dual WAN router and the Airport devices (and clients)? I have a sneaking suspicion that if the dual WAN router talks to the modems with just 100MBit, all the other Gigabit ports and devices are degraded to 100MBit too!? Please say it ain't so!

Thanks a lot for your help, guys!

 

[huluvu]

I have just skimmed through the datasheets of both the Cisco and the Netgear routers and I've found out that only the Cisco is capable of UPnP. I really want my router / DHCP server to be UPnP capable to get rid of all the port forwarding hassles.

So, can you please tell me that the "slow" 100MBit WAN/LAN ports of the Cisco do NOT affect the speed of the rest of the network and the (local) communication between the clients!?

 

[huluvu]

I've read through a lot of forum posts and reviews and I'm pretty sure now that a Draytek Vigor 2920 will be the perfect choice for my plan, since it offers Gbit Etherner over the lousy 100Mbit ports of the Cisco, hooray!