Using multiple cheaper residential-type internet connections
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Our Internet connection is a committed bandwidth fiber connection that pfsense distributes to VLANs and uses Limiters to allocate bandwidth to groups of users.
But the Internet monthly cost is high and we are wondering if replacing it with multiple residential-type fiber connection or multiple residential-type starlink connection will be cheaper that will also offer the same bandwidth per user. Each residential-type connection will be dedicated to a specific group of users (for example, 5 persons per group). And the bandwidth of a residential-type connection will not be shared with members of other groups.
Does this setup make sense? Would like to know what you think of this. Thank you in advance.
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That's possible. You actually become your own ISP on a small scale ;)
For every LAN (VLAN) interface, you create a policy firewall rule that tells that that LAN interface uses gateway 'x' where x is one of the variable WAN interfaces, each using a distinct ISP up-link.
This is btw what I'm planning to do also.
I've two spare interfaces on my 4100, so I'm thinking about getting another uplink, as Internet fiber access is so (sorry) cheap here (50 € a month for a > 1 Gbits), where I am, in the middle of no where somewhere in the south of France.
I'll use the dual access with some round robin scheme. -
Thank you @gertjan for the reply. Would you or others in this group have a rule of thumb on how many office personnel can be served by a residential-type ("up to x Mbps") connection? So that we can compute how many residential-type connections we should subscribe to, that will still provide the same overall bandwidth that is cheaper overall.
Our existing setup is a 50 Mbps guaranteed-bandwidth fiber connection that is serving around 80 office personnel. This is slow and expensive but I would like to get your opinions, because maybe replacing this with multiple residential-type connections (for example, "up to 600 Mbps") will actually lower the bandwidth available to every user, because the bandwidth is no longer guaranteed but are only peak values. Thank you in advance :)
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There is, imho, no real answer to that question.
Are these office personnel working for a video editing company ? Or just answering some emails every day ? -
Hi @gertjan sorry I will try to give more details. I work for a small school and the 50 Mbps bandwidth is divided into:
- A 12 Mbps is allocated to two hybrid (Face-to-face and Zoom) classes
- A 23 Mbps is allocated to faculty and staff doing mostly emails
- A 2 Mbps is allocated to staff doing a little video editing for the school website
- A 7 Mbps is allocated to students
- The rest of the bandwidth is allocated to guests, retired faculty, and others
Thank you again :)
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@richardsago You should get the 600 “residential” connection for a month to try while you still have the 50 business connection. There is a pretty good chance you will never see anything as slow as 50 on the “residential” connection. As far as using multiple connections for grouping, I can’t help you there. Splitting up bandwidth like you describe seems unnecessary but maybe I’m missing the point. I’ll be following along to learn more.
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@richardsago instead of or in addition to limiters traffic shaping could be used as well for instance to prioritize UDP from the video class.
Residential has some minor drawbacks such as outgoing port 25 is often blocked and/or the IP on the Spamhaus policy block list. Plus it normally is a DHCP IP.
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Thank you @Gertjan , @Billy_C , @SteveITS for the replies. May I ask what internet connection type do you use at the workplace? Is it like the guaranteed bandwidth (with service level agreement 99.6% uptime) that we use. Or is it like the alternatives that we're looking into ("minimum speed of 90Mbps or 90% of your subscribed speed at 90% reliability from your 100Mbps plan")?
If you're using the second type, how do you work around the expected downtime?
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My workplace : the classic historical national ISP, called "Orange".
40 box a month, a 5 more because I have to rent their box (using it, or not).
And 5 more, because we are a company, so that makes 50 a month for a flat rate : "take as much as you can" connection.I've been using 9600 bit modems when I started, using, Compuserve. With some modulation triacks, that went up to 55.6 Kbit. Mosaic, Trumpet Socket, Windows with a IP "TCP stack" and Global Internet became a thing.
Then : exist POTS, here comes ADSL (still over the thin copper wire), and that started at half a whopping Megabit ! First devices were USB based, as the vast majority of PCs didn't have a network card, and if they had, it was token ring or some other Netware based network.
Hubs showed up .... dumb witches costs a months worth income.
This year, stripped all 'phone' wires from the wall and ground, to be replaced with plastic cables.
Aka : fiber.
Instead of a stead stable ADSL 23 Mbits/sec down and 2 Mbits/sec up, I got a 'something between 200 Mbits /sec up and down to 1000 M (G !) bits /sec up and down. It fluctuates a bit, as the ISP gives 'what they have available'.I did aske for a fixed speed 'guaranteed line'.
299 € ex VAT a month.
Also : 200 Mbits max fixed speed up and down - peered to the ISP internal back bone router in Bordeaux (south west of France) with just ONE hop into what we call the jungle == Internet.
So, no thanks, no need for that.I'm working for a hotel restaurant, not an IT company, So I went for the 50 box solution.
I do have a 4G alternative, but that's a bit BS, because : when ISP and Internet goes down, the 4G/5G data feeds is also down.
Btw : I'm living (and working) in the middle of no where in France, not some big city : we are 6000 here, dogs, cats and birds included.Internet goes down : I tend to say : is that a thing ?? I've up time monitring since 2001. Maybe we lost a couple of hours .... maybe an entire day, 24 hours, over the last 22 years. I'll sign for that.
Btw : I excluded my own network fckups, as these are numerous. Let's say we all need some time to master our local pfSense.@steveits said in Using multiple cheaper residential-type internet connections:
Residential has some minor drawbacks such as outgoing port 25 is often
Port 25 is inter mail server only. The "let's use somebodies port 25 to send mail" are over since .... 1995 ?
Hosting a mail server behind a residential connection ? That like launching a Falcon 9 from your backyard. Can be done, but there are drawbacks. I would call these 'minor'. tell your neighbors about the self-destruct capabilities
My mail server is in the middle of the jungle on the system where it belongs : A vanilla Debian, there where things are happening : in some big data center in Paris. That's where some one can change a disk if needed, power it with there tiers 10 power supply, and remove the dust from the vans. That's 50 € a month spending, for a 32 G bytes RAM, 8 Terra raid 5, 1 Gig up down bare bone server. With good (never tested) doss protection. It runs already for a decade ( ! ) or so. I've a space in parallel, "in case of".Sorry for the ramble.
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Thank you @gertjan for the reply. I'm a newbie and I appreciate all the info and experience :)
By the way, StarLink has arrived and configured for failover for students and guests. The current Internet (the expensive, guaranteed bandwidth) access is configured as the failover for the rest.
