Dual Wan router

[donkey17]

I currently have cable broadband and also a free ADSL service with my phone provider and wondered what would be a good device to link these together ie Dual Wan.

I use the cable for the internet but I think it is a shame that I have the bandwidth sat there not being used on the ADSl link.

[Georgy291]

wouldnt you have 2 different gateways and well windows using 1 at a time?

[burble]

I'm using one of these running pfSense and it does the job nicely.

Some instructions for setting up the load balancing are here. One thing to note, pfSense has a thing called sticky connections, the idea being that a connection to a host is established over an internet connection and all subsequent communication to that host goes down the same internet connection - very important for SSH, HTTPS and so on. It doesn't work though, with sticky connections enabled I'd lose internet connectivity after a couple of minutes.

[donkey17]

That's an interesting looking object, I had been looking at one of these but I will have a look at one of those also. The best part is I need to get one for work so I can have a play with both on their cheque book.

[donkey17]

wouldnt you have 2 different gateways and well windows using 1 at a time?

You would set up the dual wan router as the gateway for the network and it will control which network the data is sent to. Multiple gateways will not work as reliable as routing tables will be a nightmare to control as both gateways will pretty much have the same information next to them.

[gss03]

To beat the Draytek drum some more, but the Draytek 2820 will do ADSL and cable ....and it'll do load balancing across both connections.

[donkey17]

To beat the Draytek drum some more, but the Draytek 2820 will do ADSL and cable ....and it'll do load balancing across both connections.

Well theres a third option, I like the backup option of 3G as I have one of them from work and that would mean that I have another backup solution in case of the kids pulling all the wires out of the green boxes again!.

Shame I cant talk work in to getting me 3 different ones to try.

[watercooled]

+1 for pfSense. Draytek do make great routers but you'd need one of their business-class, dual-WAN models which are quite expensive.