Multiple Broadband Connections at Home?

Another Web Monkey asks: "I am a typical geek. After working all day on the computer, I come home and get right back on the internet. But unlike my corporate office, I don't have multiple internet connections. I know there are others not happy with a single DSL/Cable connection, but can't afford T1's. Some dual broadband routers are starting to appear on the market. I want to know what others are doing to satisfy, even if temporarily, their cravings for faster connections at home? Has anyone tried these routers, or have another solution?"

Comments

I was thinking about this

[Pathwalker]

When I noticed that the FreBSD user mode ppp package supports both PPP over TCP/IP and multilink, the following idea popped into my head:

• Get two broadband conenctions
• Get a firewall box (Fred) with three ethernet cards
• Acquire 3 ip addresses (A, B, C) on a co-located box (Carl)
• Hook the two ISP connections to Fred.A and Fred.B configure Fred.A as the route for Carl.A, and Fred.B as the route for Carl.B.
• Hook Fred.C to the lan
• run multilink PPP over TCP/IP between Fred and Carl, with Carl.C as the assigned IP address. Use that as the default route for the LAN, with NAT to map internal IP addresses onto Carl.C.

In theory, this should give me a faster connection, that should withstand an outage of one of the two ISPs.

All I've done towards trying this out has been to get both a cable modem and a DSL connection. Right now, I have two NAT firewalls set up, and I have different boxes configured to use one or the other as the default route.

Even with a crude system like this for splitting the load over the connections, it still has been worth it to be able to run two scps at once when I have to upload a couple of hundred megs to my remote box.

Re:I was thinking about this

[droyad]

Good idea, wrong technology

Multi-link PPP must be configured on both sides of the connection, you can't have Multi-link PPP to share a connection to two different ISPs.

Would would work is having a multi-homed host with 1 connection to the LAN and two to the internet. The NAT firewall would have to be configured with 2 external IP addresses and be programmed to load ballance.

Remember you will have 2 global IP addresses. This means that if you only have one connection open, only one of the links can be ever used. This is because of the way TCP works, it uses the global IP address to identify a connection. So it would not be possible to download a large file over both connections sumiltaniously.

Re:I was thinking about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Reread Pathwalker's comment. Pay attention to the part where he writes about a co-located box called "Carl".

Whatever you do

[Smidge204]

Don't uncap your cable modem! (It's a federal offence!)

=Smidge=

Re:Bridged ethernet.

[droyad]

Bridging is the process of connecting two networks to each other transparently. What you are talking avout is teaming. It is taking two NICs and "joining" them together to provide double the bandwidth. This is achieved by having a switch that supports teaming and adapters that support this, usually have to be the same.

It's not just the speed...

[infojunkie]

It's also about staying connected.

I've been using @home (now Shaw) in Vancouver for about 5 years. The last 2 years, I've also had ADSL. They are both business packages, but Shaw couldn't offer any kind of uptime guarantee.

In my area cable is twice as fast as DSL, but Shaw enforces download limits strictly, whereas Telus (phone co.) doesn't... at all. This is important to me for both my business and my personal usage/surfing habits.

When you're supporting clients remotely, telling them that you can't do much (or anything) for them because your connection is down doesn't cut it. When you're in the middle of a remote backup, VNC or SSH session adminning a client's box and all of a sudden everything stops, they don't care. They want the job done.

As fast as the cable is, it is also down more frequently than DSL. Here anyway. So I let my wife and kid run their boxes off it while I run primarily off DSL, switch or sharing as the need arises.

For what it's worth, I run 2 seperate trimmed down linux boxen as router/firewalls with SSH tunneling VNC for remote admin when I'm out, as well as NATing to internal boxes for web and mail services.
Box A: Cable: 2 NICs, 1 in, 1 out.
Box B: DSL: 3 NICs, 1 in, 1 out DSL, 1 out to 2nd Cable IP.
Dlink 10/100 24port Switch in the middle.

Since neither Shaw nor Telus have dropped simultaneously, I haven't been down in close to 2 years.

Re:Won't work as some people might expect

[sportal]

The hardware link in the main article has gotten bad reviews. Check around.

Mod this parent up, as they are correct. However, you can do as one post said, which is have a colo box, you can follow this example:
http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.loadshare.h tml

If you don't have access to a colo box, you can spread the load of different logical connections.

I've done this under linux. You will use Advanced IP routing. iproute2
Here is the URL howto:
http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple -links.h tml

Note the last portion about Load Balancing.
It basically associates a destination IP address with a connection, so you get some packets going out one interface and some going out another interface. Not the best solution, but Cable Modem and DSL providers aren't offering full BGP peering.

Call up and get a business account

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an easy solution. You call up your telco and say you want to setup a business account, and you want a bandwidth of for your setup. They *will* do it for you. They will charge you money for it, but they *will* gladly do it to take your money. You're already willing to get a second DSL line to pump up your rate, so you should be willing to get a real connection.

Hint: business guys also get damned better service than home users when things go wrong.

Unless of course, you *aren't* willing to pay more, and were just looking for someone to post instructions on how to uncap your modem. In that case, fuck off.

Re:You Might Not Want to do that. . .

[burts_here]

If you have dsl then you will be in a budle of 50-20 if you have two connections in the same bundle then you arnt going to see any increase in bandwidth when all your neibours are on the net because you will still have to share with 48 other people. Maybe their is a minimum bandwidth per dsl adapter but i wouldnt count on it. i would check the service gaurantee before sending off any more money.