[LARTC] Routing Load balancing and traffic shaping through 2 ISP links

[Corey Hickey]

Joao Carneiro - DLS wrote:

> I have a couple of internet links: a leased line of 256kbit/s and
> an ADSL line of 1024kbit/s.

What is the upload speed of your ADSL line? ...and the leased line is
symmetric, right; i.e. 256kbit down and 256kbit up?

> What kernel is the most appropriate for this job?

Having used both 2.4.x and 2.6.x on a very busy router doing that sort
of thing, I would say that they are equal for the task in terms of
stability. Other people's opinions will vary. :) Most new development is
for 2.6 these days, so I'd say go with 2.6.

> By reading the howto I found one example that's clearly what I have:
> http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html
> 

Since you have two very dissimilar lines, I would tentatively recommend
routing traffic based upon your users' needs for bandwidth and latency.
Without knowing what kind of users you have I can't recommend anything,
but I can loosely describe a setup I used to administrate.

ADSL line: 6000kbit down, 600kbit up
- local web browsing/downloads
- local streaming video viewing

SDSL line: 1300kbit up, 1300kbit down
* high priority, low bandwidth queue
  - internet games
* medium priority, high bandwidth queue
  - incoming connections to our servers
  - ssh
  - email
* low priority, any-remaining bandwidth queue
  - p2p traffic
  - unrecognized traffic
* lowest priority, almost no bandwidth queue
  - bofh :-)


Your setup is different and your users probably have different usage
patterns, but there's a lot of flexibility in this general approach. If
you provide more details I may be able to help further.

-Corey