[K12OSN] OT: Using multiple DSL connections
Peter Scheie
peter at scheie.homedns.org
Thu Jan 31 14:00:09 UTC 2008
I have a client site where we've installed K12LTSP-5EL with a single gig NIC,
connected to a switch (which in turn has another switch daisy chained off it via
gigabit connection). The clients all have 100Mb connections. The clients are a
mix of thins, Windows, and Macs. They have Vonage phones, which according to my
reading, each require about 90K of bandwidth. I think they have 4-6 such phones
now and anticipate adding more, although I don't know what the upper limit is yet.
Because of the bandwidth requirements of the Vonage phones, and anticipated
growth in the number of phones, they have installed two DSL lines. I have not
had a chance to test the lines to see what kind of bandwidth, up & down, they
each provide. As it stands right now, the LTSP server provides DHCP, but points
to only one of the two DSL bridges as the default gateway. IOW, at the moment,
the second DSL line isn't being utilized.
My question is whether anyone has any suggestions about how to
utilize/share/combine the bandwidth of both DSL lines so that all computers and
all phones can make use of either/both lines. I could put the phones onto a
separate physical network and confine phones to one DSL line and the computers
to the other, but that seems inefficient and inflexible, and it means they will
have to make sure they pay attention to which network they plug into (which they
won't understand and therefore will do incorrectly). Depending on the time of
day, computer traffic will decline as phone traffic increases, and vice-versa,
although the nature of their respective traffic patterns is different (i.e.,
computer traffic tends to be bursty). What I'd really like is to setup a
dedicated linux box to act as the gateway for the network, put three NICs in it,
one for the internal network and one for each DSL line, and have it load
balance/round robin the traffic between the DSL lines. Any suggestions?
Peter
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