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Working With 2 ISPs For Home Networking?

Posted by timothy on from the you-failover-is-better-than-you-fail dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This is, I think, a simple question — but one which I can't get the answer to. As a typical, but perhaps high-demand home user I would like to use 2 separate ISPs. ADSL is pretty cheap nowadays, and 2 x ADSL seems a better value than one fast one — especially in terms of reliability. If one breaks, at least the other will work. Using an old box as a router/firewall, how can I configure a system to use two completely separate ISPs in a sensible manner? Ideally, I'd like the load of my browsing to be balanced, but at the minimum, I'd want some kind of 'fail-over.' If I leave torrents running over night, I'd like the router to use whichever connection doesn't block the traffic — and preferably for it to reset the errant connection. Ideas?"

5 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. DSL+Cable by certain+death · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can get a "Firebox" VPN/Firewall/Router pretty cheap on ebay. They are running about $75.00US for the Firebox 1200/2. The "/2" part means it has 2 WAN ports and you can load balance across both, it is setup to be redundant, so if one goes down, it moves all traffic to the other automagically. I use one and it works like a champ. There are more expensive solutions, and probably "Roll your own" solutions, but as most of us know, that can provide months and months of aggravation!

    --
    "My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
    1. Re:DSL+Cable by kesuki · · Score: 5, Informative

      " SmoothFirewall 4.0 - Update 3

      Download Update 3 Update 3
      516 KB (528,827 bytes)
      MD5: 85ac7940504a0fe7eef2b91016cf80f6

      This update adds Load Balancing abilities to Advanced Firewall systems. It also corrects a problem with IP address sorting on some pages and updates the DHCP client to fix a theoretical vulnerability. Problems with PPTP and PPPoE clients have also been corrected.

      Please install core Update 2 prior to installing this update.

      Detail:

              * Load Balancing
                  It is now possible to load balance outbound proxy requests and other network traffic in Advanced Firewall. Primary and secondary external connections are 'pooled' using the Firewall / connectivity and Firewall / secondary addresses pages."

      smoothwall4 supports load balancing out of the box, no hassle, no mess, no fuss, but then, smoothwall is only free as in beer, but i find it works well enough.

      --
      https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
  2. Linux distros by santix · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are little Linux distributions like Brazilfw which run on old hardware and work out of the box with features like QOS, load-balancing, port forwarding, etc. Maybe that's what you need.

  3. Dual WAN router by ribit · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isn't a dual-WAN router the simplest/cheapest method, whatever you are planning to put downstream of it? http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2004/0913rev.html

  4. Re:Point of failure by br549777 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Get DSL and Cable then buy a Xincom dual wan router. This will support 2 different internet connections or 2 of the same. You can have static ips or DHCP or PPoe on one or both wan ports. It does load balancing etc and its relativly cheap. It works great in a business enviroment or for home use. The router is less than $200 and work good if you set it up correctly. It will work with ADSL DSL Cable T1 Satalite etc.