Link aggregation (essbebe and gurus pls help)

Hi

In our office premises, we are told by airtel that they can not give us more than 2mbps broadband. We require higher speed as this does not serve the purpose.

Also, ILL/leased line is way to expensive.

So we are thinking for some sort of aggregation routers like edimax; peplink. However, if you can suggest whether it is viable OR which other routers (cost effective ones) can be used..


Thanks in anticipation.

How can routers help when ISP cant provide the speeds? Consider other ISPs! Aggregation routers are used by service providers, not the customer. Correct me if I am wrong?

Thanks for revert.

I understand that routers are devices which are used to manage networks; so why cant they help?

Also, we have bharti and mtnl only in our location. So we will have to use both (failover). Any heads up?

Imagine service provider(Airtel) as the muncipalty water pipe line with 2" size dia.
Now consider you at your home having big capacity taanks and pipelines of 10" size dia. In this case, what ever the pipe size you have, the water quantity is received from the muncipality which is of a smaller size..no matter how big pipes you have. What matters is the muncipality pipe line size. The same applies in your case.

The routers help manage the network internally, not the externel network bandwidth. Bandwidth is dependent on the service provider. I saw this in airtel where they can provide upto 16Mbps
Broadband Plans- Broadband Tariffs- Internet Connection Provider in India: airtel

Are you sure that you told them that the connectio is for business use? The one I mentioned above is for personnal use. I am not sure about MTNL, depends on which metro you are. Mumbai? Try Reliance also. They have awesome plans with no FUP!

ya ..u can always use dual or quad wan port routers.

Originally Posted by ramitzar

ya ..u can always use dual or quad wan port routers.

Are you telling that, by any chance you can increase the speed of the ISP by using one of those? Can you explain??

Well, take for instance a Quad-WAN port router that will have 4 WAN ports.So you can at most terminate four different broadband lines.Suppose each line has 2Mbps bandwidth, then the router aggregates the bandwidth to provide a total of 8 Mbps bandwidth.
It is always suggested to take connectivity from different ISPs, like 2 from Airtel & 2 from BSNL/MTNL.
Advantages: You can configure the router in failover mode so that even if a link is down, your business won't be hit.Also, traffic could be prioritized on cheaper links.

Okay,... This is new for me! So, what about the ip address? Suppose a PC connected to that router, downloading a file from the internet, would that file be downloaded through the combined bandwidth of two different ISPs? How can that be possible since only one IP address is assigned to the PC at a time.
I assume this router help to expand the network, but not the bandwidth!

Originally Posted by nevinjohn

Okay,... This is new for me! So, what about the ip address? Suppose a PC connected to that router, downloading a file from the internet, would that file be downloaded through the combined bandwidth of two different ISPs? How can that be possible since only one IP address is assigned to the PC at a time.
I assume this router help to expand the network, but not the bandwidth!

See, the PC is getting a unique LAN IP of type say 192.168.1.X assigned by the DHCP of the router.Your PC can't see how many WAN networks the router is connected to.
Generally, a download session involves a single WAN IP (that is generally allotted to a single WAN interface by the ISP).So you won't be able to combine bandwidth in most cases.While, if you are running parallel downloads, each of them may use different WAN IPs or interfaces to optimally utilize the available bandwidth.This traffic load balancing is managed by the router.
Consider the diagram in attachment.Hope that help you get over any confusion.

So Yes, I am right! There is no bandwidth expansion. Its just you connect to more ISPs for better network connectivity if in case one fails and to give redundancy! Also, its the "cloud computer" connected to that particular ISP!

Very good explanation ramtizar. I've been running 3 WAN connections for many years here in the USA. I've used the Cisco/Linksys RV series--rv042 and rv016.

Originally Posted by nevinjohn

So Yes, I am right! There is no bandwidth expansion. Its just you connect to more ISPs for better network connectivity if in case one fails and to give redundancy! Also, its the "cloud computer" connected to that particular ISP!

Actually there is N bandwidth expansion, where N is the number of WAN connections. Ie, I have 75MB of download bandwidth via three 25MB connections.

This is possible because each element on a web site is a separate request to the server. My RV016 sends each of these requests to the least busy WAN connection. So a web page with 100 requests will split over my three connections and download in parallel. This doesn't help for individual file downloads--unless you download multiple files in parallel. Then it helps a lot. Hope this helps.

Im currently using Airtel , youbroadband and my combined internet speed is around 28Mbps Airtel 16MBps + You 12Mbps .

Originally Posted by vk123

Im currently using Airtel , youbroadband and my combined internet speed is around 28Mbps Airtel 16MBps + You 12Mbps .

Very cool! Especially in India. What router are you using to combine the connections? And how much does it cost per month?

Originally Posted by techster

Thanks for revert.

I understand that routers are devices which are used to manage networks; so why cant they help?

Also, we have bharti and mtnl only in our location. So we will have to use both (failover). Any heads up?

if i understand you want to achieve this?
2 internet pipes -> bridge them up -> connect to local lan -> nat users
you might try bonding. where if one goes down other can act as a redundant one.
like you can get 2-3 connections and try to bond the circuit, 3*2 Mbps = 6 Mbps.
am i right in understanding your issue?
-paul

Originally Posted by SamirD

Very cool! Especially in India. What router are you using to combine the connections? And how much does it cost per month?

yes thats networking bonding or network teaming.
now i get it right.
you can always team 2 different networks. and viola. it works.
-paul