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Good Uses For Modem Teaming?
legana asks: "We are just about to install multiple cable modems at our office and we were wondering how to make the best use of them. What software/hardware is available that will allow us to share the modems across the network but still allow certain users priority (for uses such as video-conferencing, etc.)? Is it better to share all the modems across the entire network or break the network into subnets each with their own group of modems? Does connecting multiple modems to one computer really increase the bandwidth available?"
As already mentioned, cable modems are typically setup on a shared network. The cable companies usually have 500+ houses/connections hooked up to one node. These connections all share the same bandwidth. Different cable modems have different capabilities, but to keep users from hogging up bandwidth the cable companies use various technologies to control the bandwidth to each user on the system (packet shaping) You may just want to ask if you get purchase a higher quality of service. Having said that... I use to work at an ISP with multiple T1s. Through the life of the ISP, there were multiple ways we load balanced. One way is to use the OSPF and select equal preference for the different interfaces out (the cable modems) and it will round robin packets through them. I suppose you could try to setup OSPF on a linux box using Zebra. You could look into the packet shaping abilities of Linux. Search for packet shaper on freshmeat. Or you could buy a commercial product like the Packeteer.