Quad WAN 5 Nics 4 cable modems being balanced but what about 12 of em
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So first i'm going to explain my setup i have a AMD K6-2 400 - 320mb ram - 5 nics Three realtek 8139Ds Two 3com 3c905cs that i'm using for my pfsense box.
i have 12 cable modems currently i have 4 hooked up load balancing it seems to be working great doesnt quite split the traffic equaly but good enough seems like the main WAN gets 5 to 10 percent more traffic than the rest
heres how its setup
CM = Cable Modem
RTR = Router either netgear wgt624 or dynex dx401
WAP = Wireless Access Point
all listed respectfully
Routers 192.168.0.1/24 | 192.168.2.1/24 | 172.20.4.1/24 | 172.20.6.1
NICs 192.168.0.10 | 192.168.2.15 | 172.20.4.20 | 172.20.6.1
Lan 10.0.0.1+–-----+ +------+ +------+ +-------+
- CM 1 + + CM 2 + + CM 3 + + CM 4 +
+-------+ +------+ +------+ +-------+
| | | |
+-------+ +-------+ +------+ +-------+ - RTR 1 + + RTR 2 + + RTR 3 + + RTR 4 +
+-------+ +-------+ +------+ +-------+
| | | |
+-------+ +-------+ +------+ +-------+
+ RL0 + + RL1 + + RL2 + + XL1 +
+-------+ +-------+ +------+ +-------+
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ PFsense Box +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+--------+
+ XL0 +
+--------+
from here it goes to a 5 port switch 3 ports from that goto WAPs and the other to a 24 port switch
now the question is in your guys opinion what would be the best way to get 3 cable modems to each wan port? I can obtain vlan capable switches for very cheap and have 15 Routers of either DYNEX DX401 remarked DLINK or NETGEAR WGT624s
There are three things come to mind VLans, VIPs, or aliasing. Any opinions Suggestions ideas comments.
Thanks Sintar - CM 1 + + CM 2 + + CM 3 + + CM 4 +
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See:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=61.0If your cable modems IP addresses are in different subnets, you should be able to do away with all the routers and just connect the cable modem directly to pfSense.
Btw, what VLAN switches do you have in mind?
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the cable modems are on mutiple subnets but some of them overlap also the cable modems are assigned by dhcp every 30 to 60 days so i would rather reboot some routers than reconfigure. i also figured that the easiest setup would probably be to just alias them directly to each of the interfaces and 4 5 port hubs to hook em up still using routers so the only port they would be sharing a physical connection only from the routers to the nic also each router on a different subnet
also has any one noticed that a if a nat port forward has a large ammount of traffic going over it the Webgui, command console monitor output and keyboard input all stop or is this something i have run across router still runs but with no loging no dhcp load balancing still works EDIT:changed port forward rule to interface LAN and all is well
http://www.zonetusa.com/DispProduct.asp?ProductID=211 doesnt support entire feature set but will support 1522 byte packets and at 70 a piece localy.
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Depending on the bandwidth you need to push create a bunch of vlans on a bunch of interfaces needed
physical interfaces = (interfacebandwidth-overhead) / (bandwidth of cablemodem)
Then create vlans on that link and trunk it to the vlanswitch. At the vlanswitch configure each port as vlan and connect an uplink to it just like you already did.
Btw, I think you need a bigger box ;-)
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Each cable line is 7/512 burstable so i had already figured 3 modems to each interface alowing for full bursts if possible but there is a slight problem the problem of the bigger box. With 12 cable modems thats 84 Mbit down non-burstable and i was seeing 12 Mbit bursts for the first 60 seconds then 5.5 to 7 Mbit sustained from servers that could handle it.so this box would get slammed if 3 modems bursted at the same time so HOBA theres no thinking about it your right.
notes: a few programs dont like the upnp package
there are 3 different frequencys that the modems are running on
spoke with the cable isp and each line has a maximum burst of 30/2.5 Mbits ive only witnessed 14/1.5 at the highest burst
when i'm speaking about aliasing in setting this up i'm talking about aliasing the other networks with ifconfig
total cost so far $16.56 + 250ft cat5e and about 50 cat 5e crimp ends + time -
I'm doing the same with 5*28mb/1mb adsl lines and I think Hoba is right you should really have a bigger box. I'm using Intel Pentium IV at 2ghz with 1Gb of RAM. Under heavy load cpu usage increases to 30%….I wonder how an AMD K6-2 400 drives it....
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I am in Egypt the Internet Providers Suck Big Weenies but on the other hand the cost of 2Mbt 1:2 Adls is quite cheap! I have your basic setup I have five, four port cards stacked in one machine for a total of 20 ports!
I have 18 2Mbt connections coming into one machine and load balancing across this puppy! So I have approximately 36Mbt down and 18 Mbt up… I am spending about 600 Egyptian Pounds per 2Mbt connection! So that is a little less than 100 euro per 2 Mbt! So for under 2000 Euro a month I have a ton of bandwidth!
You need a real box to have this puppy work well! I am using a quad processor with 2gigs of ram, serial ata raid setup! This box has the balls to run all I am throwing at it! It spends most of it's time whacking it pud... instead of crashing! So if you really want to balance, route and have performance make sure you have the balls to do the job! Because a slow machine will destroy your performance!
So good luck....