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Networks Combining two xDSL connections using TP-Link TL-ER5120

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Chunkers, 5 Aug 2016.

  1. Chunkers

    Chunkers Meat Popsicle

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    Combining two xDSL connections using TP-Link TL-ER5120

    After spending a lot of effort trying to improve the quality of my phone line and ultimately being told by my ISP that FTTC 'upgrade' will be slower than my current ADSL2+ connection I have decided the best economic way to increase the speed of my home net connection is by using a load balancing router and load sharing with two separate connections.

    As a family of 4 with two teenagers we are regularly bumping into capacity issues with streaming, gaming and other issues. I am not too worried about doubling the speed of a single connection, more making more overall bandwidth available to allow each user more capacity. For this reason I don't believe I need to go down the route of a more expensive 'bonded' connection.

    My weapon of choice is the TP-Link TL-ER5120 which generally gets very positive reviews and can load balance up to four different WAN connections. I will use two phones line, two ISP's (Plusnet and Zen currently), two modems (a Zyxel VMG8324 and a D-Link D320B) and a separate WAP, an Asus AC68U for my wireless.

    I was just wondering whether any of you have any experience of this kind of setup and advice to offer, perhaps a bit of a long-shot as its a bit of a niche. Most people in the UK seem to have access to reasonably fast FTTC now.

    And yes, it is far too complicated for a home network, pffffttt.....

    Cool beans!
     
  2. saspro

    saspro IT monkey

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    You need to make sure you set it up to identify sessions.
    Straight active/active load balancing causes issues with HTTPS as the IP address of the client can change mid session and you get kicked out of things like online banking etc
     
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  3. Chunkers

    Chunkers Meat Popsicle

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    Thanks, I will have a look at how I do this, hopefully there will be something in the router webUI which will enable me to route HTTPS traffics through one IP / connection

    EDIT : This looks promising from the manual :

    [​IMG]

    Chunks
     
    Last edited: 5 Aug 2016
  4. Sp!

    Sp! Minimodder

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    I've not used a router for load balancing (I've done a few fail overs and bonded connections for clients) but load balancing never seems to be quite the right fit. Why not just set up two connections and assign people or devices to them as you see fit. one connection for kids one for adults or whatever. that way you don't need to get into expensive routers or complicated set up and you can vary / change the assignments of devices to connections until you get the desired result.

    I've done something similar to this where both routers were on the same subnet but with different IP addresses and that way you just needed to assign the default gateway to decide which connection you were using. DHCP would always send you out via one connection and anyone with a static IP could be assigned to either.
     
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  5. Chunkers

    Chunkers Meat Popsicle

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    Good point and definitely a fallback option, the nice thing about load balancing is that you make better use of the bandwidth overall, the downside is that its more complicated - the router wasn't very expensive (the TP-Link ones vary from £40-120).

    Thanks for the feedback

    C
     

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