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Networks Anyone know about ADSL Bonding?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by julianmartin, 3 Feb 2014.

  1. julianmartin

    julianmartin resident cyborg.

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    Got a mate starting a company and I'm helping him out with his IT.

    They have dire broadband resources and the pricing for leased line fibre optic is stratospheric, so my telecomms guy said think about ADSL bonding. They can provide the lines but the bonding bit is up to me.

    I've found a few companies that make routers that do bonding (Firebox is one), but the process isn't that clear, and I'm wondering if the devices I'm reading about are actually just load balancing, but I'm not sure.

    On the ISP end, my guy says that they effectively apply one IP address to the lines, but they have no choice which line the data goes down. That seems to me that you'll never get 4x download speed of one line if you have four lines, in that situation?

    The goal for this is upstream, so I think it should be all good...

    But I just wanted to see if anyone has ever done it, with what equipment (I know there are open source ADSL bonding linux distros out there) and so on. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Seems like a bit of a dark art!
     
  2. Jim

    Jim Ineptimodder

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    Be used to offer domestic line-bonding services in order to boost speeds, but I assume they gave up after fibre came out.

    I don't know, but there must be some enthusiast reviews of that service out there you could look at?
     
  3. julianmartin

    julianmartin resident cyborg.

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    Yeah I assumed Be Broadband bonding is over and done with.
     
  4. Votick

    Votick My CPU's hot but my core runs cold.

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    Pretty sure SonicWalls used to be able to do it. But that was a while back and I didn't pay much attention to them :/
     
  5. Sp!

    Sp! Minimodder

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    I've done it before for my clients using cisco routers, the ISP deals with all the bonding you just end up with one virtual interface on the router to send all the traffic thru. it worked really well but it cost a fourtune, (something like £40 per month per line (the client had 3) and about £4K for the router and all the interface cards)

    Speak to any business broadband provider and they should be able to give you options. but in all honesty unless you "need" superfast broadband its generally not worth the extra money (moving the office to somewhere with fibre or using co location for your server will probably work out cheaper) don't forget your going to need to sign up for at least a 12 month contract (maybe longer) and pay line rental on those lines.
     
  6. Big_malc

    Big_malc Minimodder

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  7. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Be was the 1 for house holds but they won't exist by middle of this month as sky will own them.

    Easy way a modem that does the job for you. Bit more difficult otherwise.
     
  8. Fruitloaf

    Fruitloaf Tinkerer

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    Draytek also do routers that can do bonding (well load balancing and fallover) though you will need an additional ADSL modem to go with them. The cheapest is I think the Vigor 2830.

    Bonding may or may not be suitable though depending on what you want. If you are hosting services then it might work though each individual connection will still be limited to the speed of one line.

    If it's for a server have they considered colocating one instead?
     
  9. Sp!

    Sp! Minimodder

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    load balancing /= bonding Load balancing works it you have multiple clients making slower connections bonding gives a single client a faster connection.

    The cheapest / generally most sensible thing to do, is get two internet connections from two different ISPs (to add more redundancy (but still not great redundancy as there almost certainly use the same cable from your premises to the cabinet and the same cabinet and the same exchange) get two routers give them different internal addresses in the same subnet, Turn DHCP on on one and off on the other, then set a staic IP address on your servers (or half your clients) pointing to one router and use DHCP to allocate the other router as the default gateway. This gives you some form of redundancy (although you do have to manually switch from DHCP to static addresses ) load balances and most importantly doesn't cost the earth. (you can also use DNS to load balance across the two public ip addresses if you have incoming connections)
     
  10. ashchap

    ashchap Minimodder

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    Not sure what your budget is but there is a german company who sell a true line bonding VPN solution: http://www.viprinet.com. I have used them in the past and their kit is quite impressive - it creates a seamless VPN across up to 6 bonded links which can be ADSL, cable or 3/4G. The data is sent over multiple links at the same time so as long as the latency is similar across the links you will get a speed increase as well as redundancy. The BBC use their kit a lot for live streaming from remote locations.

    The only downside is the cost - you'll have to ask them for a quote but it's going to be more than a couple of £k. I believe the UK distributor is http://www.wiredbroadcast.com
     
  11. Fruitloaf

    Fruitloaf Tinkerer

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    True but depending on the scenario load balancing may be good enough.
     
  12. Fruitloaf

    Fruitloaf Tinkerer

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    I can't help but feel that unless you have a good reason to then why not colocate the computers that need a fast connection. If it's just office work then load balancing or seeing if anyone does the line bonding that Be used to do would be the best on a budget.
     
  13. Pookie

    Pookie Illegitimi non carborundum

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  14. IvanIvanovich

    IvanIvanovich будет глотать вашу душу.

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    It sounds like you are after MLPPP specifically. I have done a couple of those type of set up in the past, and they can be quite troublesome. The biggest problem is finding ISP that will support MLPPP as that is necessary. Once you have that done, then you can decide if it's still worth pursuing and set a budget so you can work out if you want to get fit for purpose kit or hack something together with salvaged hardware and one of the various linux based router/firewall distros that support it.
    I think looking into alternative is also going to be very wise. Whether it's colocation, satellite or even cellular based service... it might be better and less costly options.
     
  15. julianmartin

    julianmartin resident cyborg.

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    Thanks for all the suggestions. Some more detail.

    Colocation is out - servers are not required but we have a high upload requirement. It's an auction business, that will be running live auctions running video and audio streams. Current ADSL offering is 5meg up .5 down. Satellite is out due to latency, similarly mobile but signal isn't great anyway.

    Leased line is about £1k per month for fibre 20meg, with 2k connection cost, and about £20k in cost laying the line to the building.

    Moving building is out, location too perfect for the business in a very restricted area when it comes to commercial activities.

    The 1k a month on a leased line would be fine, but we just can't stomach the installation costs right now.

    I believe it is MLPPP we need, and I do have an ISP that will support it, but are not interested in helping with the equipment or the setup of it.

    I have seen viprinet gear, appreciate it may be expensive. It's plausible though. Firebox is the only other kit I know of that can do 4 connections or more.

    Load balancing is out - we need the combined effect of 4 uploads to make it viable, I think.

    Thanks for all the ideas, if there are any telecomms guys that are interested in working on this, it's a possible job, so please get in touch.
     
  16. IvanIvanovich

    IvanIvanovich будет глотать вашу душу.

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    Have you asked if they can flip the adsl so it's 5up and .5 down? Perhaps they could get away with only 2 lines if they can swing that. One for hosting and the other as normal for office use. I have no idea about over there, but here in the US it is not too uncommon to be able to get that on business packages.
    If you can swing that I would for sure go that way over fooling around with MLPPP. Even still if you must you can do it for fairly cheap if you can find a good price on some sangoma adsl cards. You would need one card for each line, a motherboard with enough pci slots (I have used old Pentium2 stuff even before) ide to cf adapter and 2-4GB CF card stick pfsense on it. It's not too terrible hard to set up.
     
  17. Fruitloaf

    Fruitloaf Tinkerer

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    I'm guessing this is a long shot but is there anywhere in line of sight or nearby that might have better net connection possibilities?

    You might be able to rent some roof space and transmit the video there for streaming though it sounds like latency is an issue.
     
  18. Buzzons

    Buzzons Minimodder

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    Just so you know, I've been bonding ADSL for the last 8 or so years (2x2mbit ADSL lines, 2x8mbit "adslmax" lines, and now 2xFTTC lines)

    For an ISP that supports it I'd highly recommend aaisp.net.uk http://aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-bonding.html <-- details about bonding.

    I used to do the bonding on a Cisco 1841 with 2xWIC1-ADSL cards, then moved to 2xHWIC-ADSL-m cards to get the adslmax bonding working with annex-m (for faster upload).

    Now I use a routerboard (http://routerboard.com/RB951G-2HnD) to bond the FTTC lines (2xBT FTTC modems -> RB -> network.

    I've always managed to get it (with AAISP) to have double the download (in per packet bonding mode) so a single download file would go at the total speed of both lines combined. As well as double the upload speed. Currently I can download a single file at ~17MB/s (2x80mbit down) and upload a single file at 4MB/s (2x20mbit up).

    If you want any more info - drop me a pm :)

    Also - for cost it's just the price of 2 BT phone lines + the cost of 2 ADSL lines on top. Nothing added for doing the bonding.

    *quick edit* No need for MLPPP with AAISP
    *quick edit2* with the RB that I currently have, I could easily bond 4 standard ADSL connections with it (5 gig ports so 4xADSL 1xLAN) - would just need 4 modems connected to it.
     
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  19. julianmartin

    julianmartin resident cyborg.

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    dude.

    just who I needed to hear from.

    I shall be PMing you in the morning. awesome!
     
  20. Buzzons

    Buzzons Minimodder

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    Nay worries! My lurking has come in handy finally .. awwwyisss!
     

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