[LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[Mike Nielsen]

Hi all.

I'm putting together a few proposals for a client who has a T3 with four  
4down1up  cable modems.  They want to loadbalance the bandwidth.  I am going 
to propose a linux box to do this but for completeness sake I am curious what 
products do others use to do this.

I am toying with the FatPipe line of products but having not used any or know 
anyone who has it's difficult to recommend.   

That being said what "Brand" name boxen have you all used, or replaced with 
iproute2 boxes? 

What sort of problems are common with commercial boxes compared to linux or 
vice versa 
-- 


-----------------------------
|\/|ike@GetBent.net
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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

Mike,
	
On Wed, 2003-02-19 at 11:51, Mike Nielsen wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I'm putting together a few proposals for a client who has a T3 with four  
> 4down1up  cable modems.  They want to loadbalance the bandwidth.  I am going 
> to propose a linux box to do this but for completeness sake I am curious what 
> products do others use to do this.

I am not sure if there are to many here using other products. You may
have to check around with other groups out there. Possibly groups around
the products you are considering.

> I am toying with the FatPipe line of products but having not used any or know 
> anyone who has it's difficult to recommend.   

Looked into it, but it was a bit pricey so I elected for alternatives.
Some pretty cool solutions are offered by a company called SysMaster,
also pricey.
http://www.sysmaster.com/

I liked their solutions because the traffic does not actually go through
their boxes. It simply plug's into your network, and you tell it the
gateways, and then all other machines use it as their gateway. It then
load balances the connections or what ever else you want via intelligent
routing logic. At least that was my understanding.

Where as FatPipe products required the traffic to pass through its
interfaces. So you are limited in the # of connections that can be load
balanced due to interface limitations.

This could also be a problem with a Linux solution, but there are many
work arounds. Like a motherboard with allot of pci slots. Or my
preference, nics that have multiple interfaces. Then each pci slot can
be two or more interfaces.

> That being said what "Brand" name boxen have you all used, or replaced with 
> iproute2 boxes? 

Now working on a limited budget the only device I could purchase that
sounded like it would meet my needs came from 
http://www.nexland.com/

I bought, tested, and returned a ISB Pro 800 turbo. A good idea, price
point, and even color. Cool little unit. To bad it did not work for my
needs. I was awaiting a new firmware release to resolve the problems I
was experiencing. I patiently awaited a firmware release, that for me
did not come in time. So I sent the unit back, and worked on a Linux
solution. NexLand is smart in offering a 30 day money back guarantee,
which I used.

My linux solution has been up and running without any problems now for 
259 days.

> What sort of problems are common with commercial boxes compared to linux or 
> vice versa 

From my experience with the one product, Nexland's ISB Pro 800, compared
to Linux.

Well my Linux solution works, and the NexLand one did not work. The
Linux one I can service, rework, recode, etc.
All others I am at the mercy of the manufacturer.

Personally I like to be responsible for as much as possible.
 
-- 
Sincerely,
William L. Thomson Jr.
Support Group
Obsidian-Studios Inc.
439 Amber Way
Petaluma, Ca. 94952
Phone  707.766.9509
Fax    707.766.8989
http://www.obsidian-studios.com

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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[Brad Davidson]

How is this possible? Is just goes out on the network and sucks up overlimit
traffic, preventing it from getting to the destination?

I'm pretty sure that all the products out there require the traffic to pass
through them to perform the shaping, unless there's some deep voodoo out
there that I'm not aware of.

> I liked their solutions because the traffic does not actually go through
> their boxes. It simply plug's into your network, and you tell it the
> gateways, and then all other machines use it as their gateway. It then
> load balances the connections or what ever else you want via intelligent
> routing logic. At least that was my understanding.

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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[John Bäckstrand]

It almost sounds like those "boxes" does ARP spoofing
to prevent having to do any network setup changes to
me, meaning traffic would actually flow through them.
Sounds pretty stupid though, could have all sorts of
ill effects, depending on the nature of the network.

> How is this possible? Is just goes out on the network
and sucks up overlimit
> traffic, preventing it from getting to the
destination?
>
> I'm pretty sure that all the products out there
require the traffic to pass
> through them to perform the shaping, unless there's
some deep voodoo out
> there that I'm not aware of.
>
> > I liked their solutions because the traffic does
not actually go through
> > their boxes. It simply plug's into your network,
and you tell it the
> > gateways, and then all other machines use it as
their gateway. It then
> > load balances the connections or what ever else you
want via intelligent
> > routing logic. At least that was my understanding.


---
John Bäckstrand


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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

Brad,

On Thu, 2003-02-20 at 09:31, Brad Davidson wrote:
> How is this possible? Is just goes out on the network and sucks up overlimit
> traffic, preventing it from getting to the destination?

From what I was being told at the time, over a year ago. You plug it
into your network. Configure all machines to use it as their gateway. It
will then make decisions regarding the next gateway or hop to use. Once
the next hop is known it's directed there and traffic is not physically
passing through their box?

I have a similar setup where one of my routers knows how to get to a
certain network via another router. When I make a request to the second
network, my current router/gateway tells my machine how to get there.
From there the traffic is directed to that second router and network.
Pretty much ignoring and passing little if any traffic through my
original router/gateway.

> I'm pretty sure that all the products out there require the traffic to pass
> through them to perform the shaping, unless there's some deep voodoo out
> there that I'm not aware of.

It assume that their units can work either way? At the time they did not
say traffic had to pass through their box. However most of SysMaster
current diagrams except for one show traffic passing through their
units? Not sure if things changed or someone mislead me. You know how
sales men can be. Although I did speak with one of their engineers. I
just do not remember who said what.

I do not think there is any vodoo, just some proprietary routing logic?
I would suggest shooting them and email asking how if it really matters.

I sure wish a good spell or chant would get the job done. ;)

-- 
Sincerely,
William L. Thomson Jr.
Support Group
Obsidian-Studios Inc.
439 Amber Way
Petaluma, Ca. 94952
Phone  707.766.9509
Fax    707.766.8989
http://www.obsidian-studios.com

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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[Brad Davidson]

William L. Thomson Jr. said:
From what I was being told at the time, over a year ago. You plug it
> into your network. Configure all machines to use it as their gateway. It
> will then make decisions regarding the next gateway or hop to use.

So it replaces the Default Gateway. The traffic is pretty explicitly going
through it in that case. :P


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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

Brad,

On Thu, 2003-02-20 at 10:36, Brad Davidson wrote:
> William L. Thomson Jr. said:
> >From what I was being told at the time, over a year ago. You plug it
> > into your network. Configure all machines to use it as their gateway. It
> > will then make decisions regarding the next gateway or hop to use.
> 
> So it replaces the Default Gateway. The traffic is pretty explicitly going
> through it in that case. :P

Yes, but not in sense that traffic comes in one interface and goes out
another. From my understanding the main benefit of the SysMaster
solution was the number of connections being balanced had nothing to do
with the number of interfaces.

So even if the box only has two interfaces, you could load balance 2 or
more connections.


-- 
Sincerely,
William L. Thomson Jr.
Support Group
Obsidian-Studios Inc.
439 Amber Way
Petaluma, Ca. 94952
Phone  707.766.9509
Fax    707.766.8989
http://www.obsidian-studios.com

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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[Brad Davidson]

William L. Thomson Jr. said:

> Yes, but not in sense that traffic comes in one interface and goes out
> another. From my understanding the main benefit of the SysMaster
> solution was the number of connections being balanced had nothing to do
> with the number of interfaces.

... so it would go in and then come out again on the same interface?

I'm sure it's great as far as ease of configuration, but to tell the truth
I'd rather plug in an extra cable or two, and not halve my available
bandwidth by doubling the per-link traffic.

I guess it's a very targeted product, I just think it sounds rather silly.


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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[Kirby C. Bohling]

On Thu, 2003-02-20 at 14:24, Brad Davidson wrote:
> William L. Thomson Jr. said:
> 
> > Yes, but not in sense that traffic comes in one interface and goes out
> > another. From my understanding the main benefit of the SysMaster
> > solution was the number of connections being balanced had nothing to do
> > with the number of interfaces.
> 
> ... so it would go in and then come out again on the same interface?
> 
> I'm sure it's great as far as ease of configuration, but to tell the truth
> I'd rather plug in an extra cable or two, and not halve my available
> bandwidth by doubling the per-link traffic.
> 
> I guess it's a very targeted product, I just think it sounds rather silly.

I'm guessing it has two interfaces.  Hence the sentence:

> > Yes, but not in sense that traffic comes in one interface and goes out

The one interface connects to the local lan.  The other connects to a
network that can route to all of your upstream providers.  This way the
load balancer doesn't charge you per physical interface.  It's no harder
to load balance 2 way then 4 way, but a lot of network equipment makers
would charge you twice as much because there are twice as many
interfaces (or would charge you a significant amount more to have 4
interfaces).

I'm guessing this is a pretty smart option assuming the aggregate
traffic leaving you network is less then 100Mbit/s.  If it's more then
100Mbit/s, you can afford better equipment.  This does have some latency
and security issues, but would seem like a reasonable idea for a lot of
small networks that want to split out traffic down two providers.  If I
was a window's admin, and didn't know enought about Linux, I'd think
that was one really cool piece of equipment... *grin*.

	Thanks,
		Kirby


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Re: [LARTC] Commercial Alternatives

[Brad Davidson]

Kirby C. Bohling said:
> I'm guessing it has two interfaces.  Hence the sentence:
>
>> > Yes, but not in sense that traffic comes in one interface and goes
>> out another

The fact that it does NOT come in one interface and go out another implies
to me that there's only one interface. If there's two interfaces, it goes
in one and out another.. which is what he says it's NOT doing :P

> The one interface connects to the local lan.  The other connects to a
> network that can route to all of your upstream providers.

I'm not familiar with WAN routing... is it common to have a network that
can be connected to with one physical interface, that routes to many
different providers?

> It's no harder
> to load balance 2 way then 4 way, but a lot of network equipment makers
> would charge you twice as much because there are twice as many
> interfaces (or would charge you a significant amount more to have 4
> interfaces).

I could see that.. but I was under the impression that on any network
where you'd have routes to different providers that you want to load
balance, you'd need a different physical interface to each network that
the route was on.

> I'm guessing this is a pretty smart option assuming the aggregate
> traffic leaving you network is less then 100Mbit/s.  If it's more then
> 100Mbit/s, you can afford better equipment.

True :P


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