[LARTC] Load balancing multiple PPPoE connections

[Aaron Dummer]

Hello,

Currently I'm using the information from
http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html and Julian's patch
to load balance two PPPoE Internet connections (DSL).  It balances the
traffic perfectly.

                                    +------------+
                   + ppp0 (eth0) ---+ Provider 1 +
+-----+            |                +-------------
+ LAN +--- eth2 ---+
+-----+            |                +------------+ 
                   + ppp1 (eth1) ---+ Provider 2 +
                                    +------------+

However, occasionally one of the PPP connections goes down due to
provider issues, and the interface won't come back up on it's own.  To
get around this, I setup a cron job which checks to see if ppp0 and ppp1
exist, and if not, bring them back up.

In the process of the interfaces disappearing and re-appearing, some of
the load balancing routes get lost.  I tried re-executing the route
commands in the cron job, but it doesn't work every time.  This also
seems like a hackish way to solve the problem.

Have any of you experienced similar problems, or is there a better way
to load balance over 'virtual' interfaces like this?