2 DSL connections
Author
Discussion

rich1231

Original Poster:

17,340 posts

291 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
Ok dokey so now i have 2 adsl connections to my house...

I dont want to bond them together but would like both to be available on my network at once

assuming one has an ip of 192.168.0.1 and has DHCP running and the other is 192.168.0.2 and doesnt have DHCP..

what can i do to use both?

Default Gateway changes the connection used or can i on my pc with multi ethernet ports st on on .01 and the other on .02?

GregE240

10,857 posts

298 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
Er, what do you want to use both for?

A multihomed PC would suffice.

Jubal

930 posts

260 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
You need a router. These guys seem to have filled your niche nicely:

www.edimax.com/html/english/products/list-PRIrouter.htm

HTH

rich1231

Original Poster:

17,340 posts

291 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
Thanks guys

BR-6624 looks good..

I need redundant connections to work from home.

So this device looks fine


agent006

12,058 posts

295 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
rich1231 said:
I need redundant connections to work from home.


Which ISPs are you with to get the choice of exchange?

aldi

9,292 posts

268 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
You could do as you suggest, just give the second router a .2 address and manually change your dns/default gateway if there's a problem. Have actually got a client with a similar thing, everyone access tinternet via a proxy and they can just change the settings on the proxy box if theres a problem with the first router/line.

rich1231

Original Poster:

17,340 posts

291 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
agent006 said:
rich1231 said:
I need redundant connections to work from home.


Which ISPs are you with to get the choice of exchange?


Zen and Sky BB

aldi

9,292 posts

268 months

Monday 27th November 2006
quotequote all
Just thought of something neat... scratchchin Leave the default IP settings on auto/dhcp. Set the 'alternative configuration' to point to the .2 router. If the first router stops working, turn it off and then dhcp will fail and the xp box will switch to the alternative config, and the second router. bowtie

Zad

13,022 posts

267 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
Have an agreement with a neighbour who also has BB/WiFi to use their system/s in an emergency?

rich1231

Original Poster:

17,340 posts

291 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
Zad said:
Have an agreement with a neighbour who also has BB/WiFi to use their system/s in an emergency?


erm but i already have 2 dsl connections

mattley

3,039 posts

253 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
rich1231 said:
agent006 said:
rich1231 said:
I need redundant connections to work from home.


Which ISPs are you with to get the choice of exchange?


Zen and Sky BB


Both terminate at the same exchange, and I don't think either use unbundled loops so they both go into the same kit too so you havent got much redundancy, but then, it's not much money and guards against any ISP specific issues.

rich1231

Original Poster:

17,340 posts

291 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
mattley said:
rich1231 said:
agent006 said:
rich1231 said:
I need redundant connections to work from home.


Which ISPs are you with to get the choice of exchange?


Zen and Sky BB


Both terminate at the same exchange, and I don't think either use unbundled loops so they both go into the same kit too so you havent got much redundancy, but then, it's not much money and guards against any ISP specific issues.


The sky connection is unbundled

off_again

13,917 posts

265 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
For the money its a fair compromise, but be aware that you will not be adding much redundancy here (as already commented). The most likely failure will be the lines / exchange system. Even though they might be unbundled, there is still a big dependency on the likes of BT. Ok, so its two ISP's and the failure of one means the other will be unaffected, but that only happens pretty rarely.

From what I understand about ADSL bonding though, you may need to have two links from the same ISP! It should be possible to bond the links from two separate ISP's but I suspect it will require a specific configuration from them to do this and hence not easy. Most of the bigger ISP's do not like you bonding and its the smaller (more service oriented ones) that allow it, so check that SKY and the other one do - you need to get agreement from them before it will work.

Also bonding doesnt actually add that much resilliency either. You effectively bring the two into one connection and send the traffic accordingly. Should one fail then it will affect the other link until it has been re-set and not using bonding. Some bonding kit does this automatically, but you are still looking at a period of outage, even though its a short time.

A better approach would be to look at a router which supports Dual WAN and that can failover from one link to the other. So one is used as the primary and on the failure of this it drops over to the other. DLinks support this as do some Cisco models. Its not cheap, but its much simpler and easier to do and as a result more likely to actually work. I have seen the Dlink in use and its pretty swift and effective. BUT, in the case of failover you will drop your connections that you have and your IP address will change so anything that you are doing will have to be re-initiated. The same goes for ADSL bonding too - if it has to drop the bonding and switch to single link then you will loose everything.....

The best solution is load balancing but you are looking at £1000+ for this and might not be relevant. Maybe the best thing to do is check your ISP service level agreements and go with the best one - that way you have some compensation if things do go wrong. Almost always these are business services and not "home" ones which will basically screw you over if there is a fault.

Sorry, but probably not what you want to hear.

rich1231

Original Poster:

17,340 posts

291 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
off_again said:
For the money its a fair compromise, but be aware that you will not be adding much redundancy here (as already commented). The most likely failure will be the lines / exchange system. Even though they might be unbundled, there is still a big dependency on the likes of BT. Ok, so its two ISP's and the failure of one means the other will be unaffected, but that only happens pretty rarely.

From what I understand about ADSL bonding though, you may need to have two links from the same ISP! It should be possible to bond the links from two separate ISP's but I suspect it will require a specific configuration from them to do this and hence not easy. Most of the bigger ISP's do not like you bonding and its the smaller (more service oriented ones) that allow it, so check that SKY and the other one do - you need to get agreement from them before it will work.

Also bonding doesnt actually add that much resilliency either. You effectively bring the two into one connection and send the traffic accordingly. Should one fail then it will affect the other link until it has been re-set and not using bonding. Some bonding kit does this automatically, but you are still looking at a period of outage, even though its a short time.

A better approach would be to look at a router which supports Dual WAN and that can failover from one link to the other. So one is used as the primary and on the failure of this it drops over to the other. DLinks support this as do some Cisco models. Its not cheap, but its much simpler and easier to do and as a result more likely to actually work. I have seen the Dlink in use and its pretty swift and effective. BUT, in the case of failover you will drop your connections that you have and your IP address will change so anything that you are doing will have to be re-initiated. The same goes for ADSL bonding too - if it has to drop the bonding and switch to single link then you will loose everything.....

The best solution is load balancing but you are looking at £1000+ for this and might not be relevant. Maybe the best thing to do is check your ISP service level agreements and go with the best one - that way you have some compensation if things do go wrong. Almost always these are business services and not "home" ones which will basically screw you over if there is a fault.

Sorry, but probably not what you want to hear.


did you look at the edimax website mentioned above?

They have a dual WAN load balancing Router that i can get for 99 plus vat from scan.co.uk


im not really after a perfomance combo, more for a bit of resilience in the connection.... The skyBB is free so anything it adds is fine by me.

off_again

13,917 posts

265 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
rich1231 said:
did you look at the edimax website mentioned above?

They have a dual WAN load balancing Router that i can get for 99 plus vat from scan.co.uk


im not really after a perfomance combo, more for a bit of resilience in the connection.... The skyBB is free so anything it adds is fine by me.


Just taken a look - looks good and if it does the bizz then great. But have to say that its promising a lot for naff all money. I have seen the Dlink stuff work (as well as SonicWall Firewalls with dual WAN support) and they only do fail-over. I have to say that if the industry leaders in volume / low price solutions cannot do it then there is something missing.....

Not saying that it wont work - but skeptical. Seen too many promises to believe everything that is in print.

roop

6,018 posts

315 months

Tuesday 28th November 2006
quotequote all
You have some free 'redundancy', which isn't so bad - a failover or load balancing box would be the best bet in that situation. I'd be inclined to have a DSL router with failover to ISDN or even PSTN or 3G.

My own failover is an ultra-high gain wireless antenna allowing me to nick free wifi at several miles like some sort of electromagnetic sniper hehe

rich1231

Original Poster:

17,340 posts

291 months

Saturday 2nd December 2006
quotequote all
Found Thr BR-6524K ehich seems more uptodate that the other one, so will get one this week. Anyone have any experinece of it?

agent006

12,058 posts

295 months

Sunday 3rd December 2006
quotequote all
rich1231 said:
The sky connection is unbundled


You're still vulnerable to the age old "2@ with a JCB" enduced outage on both lines though, as they'll take the same route to the same exchange. All depends how much you NEED redundancy. Diversely routed lines tend to cost muchos £.