[Pc_Support] RE: Bonding 2xADSL or ADSL+cable?

[Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>]

From: Damien McKenna <dmckenna at thelimucompany.com>
> Put another way, if you have 2mbit ADSL line coming in, need more
> bandwidth but are on an optical fiber line so can't upgrade to a higher
> bandwidth DSL, what would you do?  We've got ~30 people who all
> connect to a remotely hosted application for their day to day work
> along with a locally hosted email server and our bandwidth needs are
> increasing.

One thing I need to know is if all those connections are outbound only?
I.e., are all the users on the LAN and merely accessing Internet resources?

If so, then you can just add more and more connections and round-robin
them.

Or are people working at home and contacting your servers (incoming)?
If so, then it's cheaper to have a single provider than multiple providers,
an assigned ASN and other details.

Or you might want to look at SDSL options if it's the amount of inbound
traffic.  A SDSL line will kick the crap out of an ASDL plus cable, and probably
for little more cost, when you need inbound (serving outbound) bandwidth.

> We could go with multiple T1's but we don't want to spend that much.

The media really doesn't matter, at least not technically.

You can pseudo load-balance outgoing connections and it will seem
transparent.  You can even designate specific systems to use specific,
outgoing routes in a variety of ways -- even multiple NAT devices for
each connection.

But when you're talking inbound, you'll either need to have people
hardcode the specific network, or get an ASN and publish routes via BGP.
You typically don't go the latter unless you need provider redundancy,
and I seriously doubt your ADSL/cable providers will allow you do
get an ASN for your connections.

Again, the "factor" here is are all of your users on the same LAN and just
using Internet resources?  If so, use iproute and round-robin outgoing.
If not, then you've got some hard decisions to make.


--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org