Mulitiple WAN Aggregation Devices - Anyone Using?

[drmike]

So my ongoing digital dirt road experience with throughput and lousy cable upstream has hit my tolerances.

Intending on bringing in other bandwidth.  Not many options here.  DSL is available and 4G is available.  So grabbing one of each ASAP as my online experience as-is basically unusable due to latency and packet loss (nothing works, many reloads, time waste, frustration, etc.).

There are some options at market like Peplink that allow combining of multiple WANs in one devices and their software / algorithms balance the workloads.   There are other offerings that do face value same thing. Draytek has some offerings, Netgear, Linksys, etc.

Anyone using any such device and how is your experience with such gear?

 

[d2d4j]

Hi

We use draytek and peplink, which work well, but are only load balancers.

All are 3 or 4 WANs and relatively easy to navigate and setup, including failover.

You may want to consider line bonding though, which we also use with some clients. Again, works well and the added advantage is it increases speeds ie 3 x 8 mb dsl lines = 24 mb single line (well not quite taking into account overheads).

You may also want to look at pfsense, and build your own

I hope that helps

Many thanks

John

 

[drmike]

Hi We use draytek and peplink, which work well, but are only load balancers. All are 3 or 4 WANs and relatively easy to navigate and setup, including failover. You may want to consider line bonding though, which we also use with some clients. Again, works well and the added advantage is it increases speeds ie 3 x 8 mb dsl lines = 24 mb single line (well not quite taking into account overheads). You may also want to look at pfsense, and build your own I hope that helps Many thanks John

Which gear to your knowledge supports bonding feature?

 

[d2d4j]

Hi

I'm sorry I cannot remember the website, but google multipathnetworks

These can you any connection, and their box has minimum 2 nics and 2 USB for 3/4 G devices or USB modems.

I hope that helps

Many thanks

John

 

[d2d4j]

Hi

Sorry, it's multipathnetworks.com.

Many thanks

John

 

[drmike]

Multipath has strange model.   Monthly subscription on top of gear purchase and it's a hosted thing where traffic headed through it seems.  Meh, not my cup of tea there.

 

[GIANT_CRAB]

Mikrotik (and pfsense?) supports bonding. But bonding is a bit buggy for Mikrotik, when it tries to get the IP through "dhcp client" on a single WAN interface instead of the bonded WAN, it has a high chance of not being able to grab the IP. If you want to use the bonding, I would highly recommend 802.3ad. RR has a lot of issues for WAN. 

 

[Jonathan]

We use pfsense in our office (NOT datacenters) and it works alright. We don't use it bonding, we use it in a failover scenario. The GUI is pretty intuitive and it's packed with features.

 

[robbyhicks]

I'm using Cisco Meraki in our office and at my Home.  Extremely easy to use and supports multi-wan aggregation as well as USB 4g failover.

 

[bizzard]

pfsense does a good work with quality hardware. Have setup load balancing 3 DSL connections for multiple clients and they all works without any issue. Haven't tried any USB internet with the setup, but I think it will also be possible.

 

[drmike]

I'm using Cisco Meraki in our office and at my Home.  Extremely easy to use and supports multi-wan aggregation as well as USB 4g failover.

Expensive kit.  Recommendation on model?  

pfsense does a good work with quality hardware. Have setup load balancing 3 DSL connections for multiple clients and they all works without any issue. Haven't tried any USB internet with the setup, but I think it will also be possible.

pfsense is looking like the right fit and oddly it was my short list for other reasons.

Any idea @bizzard if it support simultaneous usage of multiple upstreams without too much complication?  Like 1 file xfer diced up across two lines and things like that - technically bonding I suppose...

What ahh sort of hardware CPU use are you running on your pfsense boxes and what sort of combined bandwidth?

 

[robbyhicks]

MX64 - would be your best bet - and you can get a free MR18 access point from them if you attend a webinar as well

The MX64 new will run you ~$625 with a 1yr enterprise license.

 

[bizzard]

Any idea @bizzard if it support simultaneous usage of multiple upstreams without too much complication?  Like 1 file xfer diced up across two lines and things like that - technically bonding I suppose...

I haven't looked at bonding. As what I have read, if the upstreams are from same provider, it won't be much of an issue. The requirement I had was to provide a decent connectivity for around 160 systems and were 3 different upstreams.

What ahh sort of hardware CPU use are you running on your pfsense boxes and what sort of combined bandwidth?

One of the setup uses a Dell E3 Tower Server, with 2 on-board Broadcom chip based NIC's and an additional dual port Intel NIC. Not sure of the model. The combined bandwidth is 120Mbps. One 100 and two 10Mbps connections, serving for around 160 systems, with a max speed limit of 5Mbps per system.

Another setup has around 20 systems in a media company, runs on a desktop grade Intel dual core and a quad port Intel NIC(bought from ebay, pulled from a server). The combined bandwidth is 62Mbps, again with 3 different connections.

The NIC card is of most importance in the setup as the Realtek ones caused me a headache with the system hanging every now and then. Intel seems to be recommended ones with pfsense.

Bandwidth might seem very low, when compared to US and 100Mbps connections are very rare here. My home connection is still a 512Kbps line and our office has 4Mbps and 1Mbps connections from two providers.