Duan Wan Router - Recommendations?

[TheChillPill]

Hi Folks,

I work from home, and having recently suffered 2 full days of downtime with my broadband, I have decided to have a 2nd phone line installed along with a 2nd broadband connection.

The primary purpose is to use the 2nd connection as a 'fallback' in case the first fails, however I'd like to get maximum use out of this at the same time. I believe the best I can achieve is to 'load balance' between the two, therefore I'm on the lookout for a dual wan load balancing router.

I've found a handful of them so far, but none have had 'excellent' reviews, so I'm on the lookout for some recommendations from you folks.

Budget is up to around £300, but the cheaper the better obviously - I can extend the budget a little further if there is a significant benefit to doing so.

Thanks in advance :-)

[peterb]

Hmm - there are two ways of doing this - one is ADSL bonding where the two lines appaer as one high speed line - and you need to contact your ISP to see if they offer this service and what hardware they recommend.

If you are looking at two lines from two ISPS, then you are looking at multipath trouting. You can do it with a linux box acting as a router with multiple NICs - two feeding the two ADSL two routers - one for each line, and a third taking incoming traffic from your internal lan. That could lbe configured to load balance and increase throughput, but not give true bonding. If one line falls over, the other takes the load.


These links may help: The first two look at bonding, the third looks at multipath routing using a linux box.

Upstream Internet - Bonded ADSL Linux Boot CD Image

Bonded Broadband

lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html

(you need to put http:// in front of this - no www - if I paste ite it - it doesn't appear in the post) THIS is actually what I think you are trying to achieve.

[gss03]

Draytek 2910 had dual WAN in the form of 2 rj45 connectors.

[Steve]

The Draytek Vigor 2910 has dual WAN for failover/load balancing.

It also supports a third WAN interface via a USB 3G HSDPA modem, for when things really go tits up.

But you'd need a pair of Vigor 100 ADSL->Ethernet modems to go with it if you're using ADSL rather than cable broadband.

Draytek's just launched the 2930 too, not sure what it's like though.

Welcome to DrayTek UK - Vigor Routers for more info.

[TheChillPill]

...snip...

As much as I would have loved to have gone with the bonded route, it would defeat the point of having the 2nd line as a fallback if they were both with the same ISP.

The Linux box suggestion is perhaps a little too much overkill for me, and with something like this I'd like to reduce the potential for something to break.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

[TheChillPill]

The Draytek Vigor 2910 has dual WAN for failover/load balancing.

It also supports a third WAN interface via a USB 3G HSDPA modem, for when things really go tits up.

But you'd need a pair of Vigor 100 ADSL->Ethernet modems to go with it if you're using ADSL rather than cable broadband.

Draytek's just launched the 2930 too, not sure what it's like though.

Thanks for that, looks like the ticket. I incidentally managed to get by with a USB HSDPA modem when I had the downtime, so sticking that on it aswell would give me a pretty much bullet-proof setup I would hope.

[peterb]

As much as I would have loved to have gone with the bonded route, it would defeat the point of having the 2nd line as a fallback if they were both with the same ISP.

The Linux box suggestion is perhaps a little too much overkill for me, and with something like this I'd like to reduce the potential for something to break.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

Yes! The Draytek looks much simpler! Glad you got it sorted!

[sam123]

Hi all

Could users of the DrayTek 2910 dual wan router provide some feedback on its performance, especially in fail-over and bandwidth aggregation?

Thanks!

Sam