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    Question about Multi WAN

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Routing and Multi WAN
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    • X
      xrated
      last edited by

      I saw a youtube video where a guy put 2 wan links together as tier1 and he claimed that he had double the download speed. But according to documentation this is not possible as pfsense is doing only round robin.
      He showed a speed test as proove, is it possible that this speed test is establishing multiple connections?
      Is it possible with DSL lines to get more speed with 1 connection?

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      • M
        maldex
        last edited by

        depends, if the test used two simultaneous downloads, then yes. But one TCP session alone is limited to one uplink. the second session might take the other WAN link and use that bandwith then.
        So if your application is always heading for the same Server/port (e.g. news- or game-server, one session), only one uplink is used, if your application uses a lot of sessions, the firewall might distribute these sessions among the uplinks.

        sorry long time i did that with pfsense, but if you're investigating this, head for 'policy based routing'. Basic routing happens on Layer3(IP) and would just 'balance' remote IP's (system->routing). If you want to control the way Layer4(TCP/UDP) sessions are distributed, you'll need to look at the firewall ruling, bottom is drop-down which uplink to use.

        have fun

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        • P
          phil.davis
          last edited by

          If you are using a download manager to get a big file, it will actually make multiple threads on the client and each thread will be getting a piece of the file. At the end it puts all the pieces together to make the full file. Each thread makes a separate connection/stream/flow/state to the server on the internet. Each of those states will get load-balanced between the WAN links, and so you effectively can get total download speed of both links.

          For an application that has just a single-threaded connection to its server, it can only ever run at the speed of the link that that thread's state happens to be on.

          As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."
          If I helped you, then help someone else - buy someone a gift from the INF catalog http://secure.inf.org/gifts/usd/

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          • X
            xrated
            last edited by

            Is there any additional logic how pfsense will spread traffic or is it just going to next wan on new connection?

            Problem is, there are 4x DSL1000 lines and one 12000 over SAT with a total of 20 people using it. So at least it would be good to use the SAT one more often.

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            • P
              phil.davis
              last edited by

              System->Routing, edit the gateway, click Advanced, there is Weight option. Set the various gateways to different weights. More weight means the gateway will get more states allocated to it in the round-robin.

              There is no way to guarantee that each state has a similar bandwidth need - some states might a big download from a server that can feed you data at full speed, other states might be a client-server application that exchanges a few messages every now and then. But on average it should balance up the load.

              As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."
              If I helped you, then help someone else - buy someone a gift from the INF catalog http://secure.inf.org/gifts/usd/

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              • X
                xrated
                last edited by

                pfsense has really impressive features.
                Assuming that services from lan should be offered in internet over multi gateway, how NAT is handled here?

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                • X
                  xrated
                  last edited by

                  So assuming VoIP should be used, i think in NAT a single WAN interface can be specified. But thats only for incoming traffic. How outbound traffic can be bound to specific interface when the SIP client registers to the ISP?

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                  • P
                    phil.davis
                    last edited by

                    Make a rule that matches the SIP client(s) and just specifies a gateway (not gateway group). Then the traffic for that SIP client goes out only that gateway. If there is only 1 WAN that a SIP client can register from, then you are stuck for failover/load-balance of that.

                    As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."
                    If I helped you, then help someone else - buy someone a gift from the INF catalog http://secure.inf.org/gifts/usd/

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                    • X
                      xrated
                      last edited by

                      Ok. Would it be possible to use loadbalancing when there is only 1 PBX and 1 SIP Provider?

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