Load Balancing Router?

[Four and Twenty 0]

I would like to put a load balancing router in between my private network and my T1 + Cable.

 

Right now I have a T1 a SDSL and a Cable modem

I have somewhere in the area of 25 computers in the building with many switches and routers connecting different groups of computers to different connections.

 

As you can imagine this is quite a mess and i am not quite sure how or why it got this way. We have good structured cabling in place so that is not an issue at all. I am dropping the SDSL because i just got the T1 to replace it. I would like to load balance the T1 and the cable so that i can get the fast download speed that I get off the cable and the robust reliable connection that i get with the T1.

 

One other thing that i would like this router to do if possible would be to direct certian request to certian connections.

like say i hit some public ip address outside my private network like 66.232.22.10 i want that to go over the T1. The reason being is that some of the stuff i connect will only authenticate IP's that i specify with them so i would need to connect with an ip on my t1 that is static.

If that feature wasn't on there that would be no big deal because i will still have some servers that are not on the private network at all and i can remote desktop into them to do stuff on the other servers. That just seems a little round about but i am used to it.

 

Any what reasonably priced router can do what i am talking about?

it would need DHCP also.

 

-Jeff

[adamvjackson 0]

A Cisco 2600 series router should do fine. You'll need two WAN cards, most likely a serial card for the T1, and then an ethernet WAN card for the cable service.

 

The load balancing should all be done on the router via Cisco's IOS.

[Four and Twenty 0]

I ended up buying this cheap one

http://www.xincom.com/twr402.html

 

good news is that it works great and i can do all the outbound IP/port routing that I need to do.

 

I love it cause I can surf on the Cable and do FTP uploads and remote SQL admin on the T1

 

also the firewall is great.

 

only downside to this router is you can't have a VPN behind it but that is ok cause i have server on the T1 that are also on the private net so i can VPN through them.

[Four and Twenty 0]

i am really loving this router

it worked like crap at first untill i got the latest firmware update.

 

now it has been up for almost 3 days

 

It is amazing that you can buy a hardware load balancing firewall/router for $80. Technology has gotten so cheap.

 

I can now leave the office for long periods of time knowing that if on internet connection goes down nothing needs to be changed.

 

the t1 has never gone down but the cable sure has. I like having the cable for everyone to surf on because we consistantly get 5.5 mbps off of it.

 

I would highly recomend this product for anyone looking to hook up 2 broadband connections to their network. I am still amazed that it works this well. It was kind of a gamble buying it but I figured I could take that gamble at only $80 and it worked out great. Did I mention I like this product?

[jwdeff 0]

Originally posted by adamvjackson:

Quote:

A Cisco 2600 series router should do fine. You'll need two WAN cards, most likely a serial card for the T1, and then an ethernet WAN card for the cable service.

 

The load balancing should all be done on the router via Cisco's IOS.

 

How do you set that up in IOS? I talked to the local Cisco rep about doing something similar, and he suggested a crazy 3-router OER solution.

 

I'm not confident that the consumer-grade dual-WAN port routers have have the features we need, so I was hoping to do something similar with a Cisco. Static routing, EIGRP, OSPF, etc all won't work for us, and we don't have enough people to get a whole class C block to do BGP.

[DS3Circuit 0]

HA ! The local ISP that we deal with is unable to support BGP. So basically we got 6 T's going into a DigitalLink IMUX. Tried the Larscom IMUX but it was worth even less.

 

A few more Ts and we will be on the same price for a T3 (going by mileage of course )

[Four and Twenty 0]

Originally posted by jwdeff:

Quote:

Originally posted by adamvjackson:

Quote:

A Cisco 2600 series router should do fine. You'll need two WAN cards, most likely a serial card for the T1, and then an ethernet WAN card for the cable service.

 

The load balancing should all be done on the router via Cisco's IOS.

 

How do you set that up in IOS? I talked to the local Cisco rep about doing something similar, and he suggested a crazy 3-router OER solution.

 

I'm not confident that the consumer-grade dual-WAN port routers have have the features we need, so I was hoping to do something similar with a Cisco. Static routing, EIGRP, OSPF, etc all won't work for us, and we don't have enough people to get a whole class C block to do BGP.

 

 

I would also like to know how to do this.

 

The cheapo load balancing router i have is nice for now but I will be adding more T1's in the future so I would like a better solution soon.