berksupport
join:2008-05-01
Dover, DE
|  [Servers] Dual WAN routing question
Hi everyone, I'm looking for clarification on a question. I'm assistancing a friend on a potential configuration change. They have just signed up for a second wan connection. They server a few websites and would like to have the incoming traffic come in one wan (let's say wan1) and the content requested go out the other wan network (wan2). Another option is to have the incoming request come in wan1 and go out either wan1 or wan2 (loadbalancing outbound traffic across the two). Having the wan1 inbound and wan1+wan2 outbound option would be most preferred. I don't think this is possible, due to the fact the web request is coming in to say ip 72.x.x.x and the request might be being returned out ip 91.x.x.x |
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JoelC707
join:2002-07-09
Scottdale, GA
clubs:
| Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. At least not without expensive hardware and even then I've never played with any of it so I don't know if it will indeed work like you want. In the general sense, what comes in on one IP must go back out that IP. You can download through both interfaces if the program you are downloading with opens up mutiple connections but beyond that it is just a round robin approach for load balancing (you could also have strict rules that say "when WAN 1 is 80% saturated all future connections go out WAN2 and not before").
From a server hosting standpoint, a consumer class load balancing router is not going to work at all. There are options out there and there is a discussion about them going on in another forum here but there seems to be mixed reviews about them already. One thing you could do is manually load balance the websites. For example, website A is a high traffic site so it gets WAN 1 all to itself. Websites 2-4 are low traffic and get put on WAN 2. You would need to modify the DNS A records to reflect the different IP addresses and make appropriate changes to the web server if they are all hosted on the same server but it is doable. Another option, though probably out of your price range) is a bonded T1 (or possibly bonded DSL). This gives you the extra bandwidth but keeps it all on the same IP. |
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berksupport
join:2008-05-01
Dover, DE
| Thanks Joel, This is what I was expecting. Since a web browser is initating the connection and is expecting the content to be provided back on the same connection, I didn't think this would be possible (thought maybe an outside, remote chance). Thanks again for the reply.
If anyone else has any insight please feel free to reply. |
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elnino
join:2006-08-27
Akron, OH
| said by berksupport  :Thanks Joel, This is what I was expecting. Since a web browser is initating the connection and is expecting the content to be provided back on the same connection, I didn't think this would be possible (thought maybe an outside, remote chance). Thanks again for the reply. If anyone else has any insight please feel free to reply. That's correct. You can't have just one internet connection for incoming and the other for outgoing. |
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Anav
Sarcastic Llama? Naw, Just Acerbic
Premium
join:2001-07-16
Dartmouth, NS | A better understanding of the requirement will allow us to provide possible solutions. In other words, who or what type of activity is going on, and how do people know where to go to access the information. |
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NetFixer
Freedom is not free
Premium
join:2004-06-24
Murfreesboro, TN
 ·Vonage
 ·Cingular Wireless
·AT&T CallVantage
 ·AT&T Southeast
 ·Comcast
·Covad Communications
edit:
May 5th, @12:15AM
| reply to berksupport
To some extent I do what you ask by using a relatively inexpensive Linksys RV082 dual wan router. I setup DNS and have router rules to always point certain traffic such as SMTP and HTTPS to a specific WAN port and IP address since some protocols are very picky about IP address changes during a session.
One of my web sites »portscan.dcs-net.net also provides a simple port scanning feature for firewall testing. Some of the ports that are scanned are blocked by one of my ISPs, so I also have router rules setup to force those outgoing packets through the correct WAN connection.
Other than that I use round robin DNS and the weighted round robin load balancing in the router to distribute the load fairly evenly. Whether or not the RV082 would be suitable for your application would depend on exactly what that application does and what ports are used. It sounds is if you are only talking about normal web browsing, and for that, simple round robin DNS and the weighted round robin load balancing in the router should work quite well (it does for me).
You may want to go the the Linksys web site and download the user guide to see if it appears possible to use the RV082 for your application. There is also an on-line emulator at »ui.linksys.com/files/RV082/1.1.6···mary.htm but that uses a rather old firmware, so some of the settings and features have changed on the more current firmware releases.
EDIT:
Just in case you don't know what I mean by round robin dns, here are a couple of examples:
Here are a couple of samples of hosts that use HTTPS and SMTP respectively and need a single IP address because of possible problems with round robin DNS.
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Test your firewall. |
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