Hi,
A friend asked me a problem on her company. Basically, she got
multiple Internet access accounts, and she wants to bundle it, so the
total bandwidth will be bigger. It will be very helpful to her work.
She uses strictly Microsoft Windows (2000 and 2003) on her company.
So I tried to set up multilink, only to find out that the ISPs doesn't
support multilink. I looked around.
It seems that Linux can do this (keyword: lartc) because it can do
multipath routing - basically, you can have multiple default gateway
on Linux, and it will automatically load-balance traffic among them.
Unfortunately, route.exe doesn't have this feature.
I can set up multiple default gateways manually; by setting up
multiple gateways for 0.0.0.0 address, and set the metrics of them to
1. However, turned out that when this is the case (multiple gateways
for 0.0.0.0, each with same metric), then Windows will use only the
first one.
I wonder if this is doable in Windows at all ?
If yes, kindly please let me know, since I'm out of clues already at the moment.
Many thanks,
Harry |
Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
23 Feb 2006 22:53 PST
sufehmi1...
See if this suits her needs:
"NAT32 is the only package of its kind to fully support multiple Internet
connections, multiple private LANs and multiple private LAN gateways. It
surpasses Microsoft® Internet Connection Sharing in both performance and
flexibility and is well-suited for use in large networks with complex
private LAN topologies."
"NAT32 Enhanced...now runs on all Windows platforms"
http://www.nat32.com/
Let me know...
sublime1-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
sufehmi1-ga
on
23 Feb 2006 23:44 PST
Hi sublime,
That looks like just what she need, thanks.
I'll test it tonight, and give you credit if it indeed the solution to her problem.
Thanks,
Harry
|
Clarification of Question by
sufehmi1-ga
on
24 Feb 2006 02:43 PST
Hi sublime,
Could you please report that again as an answer, so in case NAT32
works, then I can credit you straight away.
Many thanks,
Harry
|
Clarification of Question by
sufehmi1-ga
on
24 Feb 2006 06:14 PST
Hi sublime1,
I just evaluated NAT32. Unfortunately, on Windows 200x and XP, it's
unable to aggregate multiple dial-up connections.
After some digging, I found out that this is because DUN connection on
these OS doesn't become a network adapter, thus can't have NDISWANIP
assigned to it, so disabling NAT32 from aggregating those connections.
Thanks for your help anyway.
Thanks,
Harry
|
Clarification of Question by
sufehmi1-ga
on
24 Feb 2006 06:24 PST
Just to clarify the requirements for the accepted solution:
1. Easy to setup
2. Easy to maintain
3. Require little work to maintain
4. Reliable
5. Works on Windows 200x or XP
6. Enabling us to aggregate multiple dial-up connections, where the
ISP doesn't support multilink.
ROUTE.EXE (barely) fulfill these requirements, although it may involve
some work to maintain it (point #3) - every time a connection
disconnects, we'll need to set up the proper route for it again.
Unfortunately, it fails on the main point (#6).
If you have any ideas / clues, do please let me know.
Thanks.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
24 Feb 2006 09:35 PST
I guess it's a good thing I didn't post a formal answer.
I'm sorry to hear that your evaluation of NAT32 didn't
pan out. I also didn't realize you were talking about
aggregating dialup connections. I'm not sure there's a
software solution for that.
I did find a possible hardware solution, in the form of
a product called Bandit, by Sonic Systems. It sounds like
just what she needs, though all I can locate is a press
release from 1998, so I'm not certain it's still being
sold or supported:
"Sonic Systems, Inc. announced today at Spring Internet World
the availability of Bandit, an Internet access device which
promises high speed Internet connections at a low cost. Bandit
aggregates the speed of up to three modems to create one very
high speed virtual connection to the Internet which can be
shared by an entire network. Each of the three modems connected
to Bandit has its own low cost dial-up account with an Internet
Service Provider ('ISP'). By combining the performance of three
dial-up accounts, Bandit provides up to 345 Kilobits per second
('Kbps') of Internet bandwidth. In doing so, Bandit offers small
to medium size organizations fast and affordable access to
Internet resources such as Web sites, E-mail and Newsgroups."
http://www.sonicwall.com/General/DisplayDetails.asp?id=95
Contact information is on the page, but if that's outdated, the
contact page for the main site is:
http://www.sonicwall.com/company/contact.html
Let me know where this takes you...
sublime1-ga
|
Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
24 Feb 2006 09:47 PST
sufehmi1...
I also wanted to point out some documentation on the NAT32 site
which seem to address your concerns about NDISWANIP support, and
bandwidth aggregation:
"Bandwidth Aggregation is supported (see the setis command),
allowing multiple connections to be shared by all private
machines, or certain connections to be reserved for use by
specific private machines or subnets. Because of this route
selection by source address capability, NAT32 bandwidth
aggregation is superior to other forms of connection
aggregation such as Multilink, which require ISP support
and which cannot allocate bandwidth dynamically."
[...]
"NDISWANIP Support
Whereas Windows 9X and NT4 support a static number of PPP
Client and Server interfaces, Windows 2000 and higher supports
a variable number of NDISWANIP interfaces. The implication of
this is that NAT32 must recalculate interface bindings at
runtime, i.e. when connections are established. NAT32 Build
1020 and higher therefore momitors the relevant TCP/IP
Registry settings and recalculates all PPP Client Interface
bindings whenever Windows changes those settings."
More on the page:
http://www.nat32.com/nat32e/htm/dialer.htm
|
Clarification of Question by
sufehmi1-ga
on
24 Feb 2006 21:04 PST
Hi sublime,
Thanks for the leads again.
I've investigated Sonicwall, unfortunately I could no longer find
traces of Bandit in their website, at all. They may have dropped the
product now.
Anyway, I'm trying to avoid hardware solution for a reason that I
can't disclose here (it's not money, otherwise I'll be asking this
question in a free forum).
Re: Windows 2000 + NAT32 + Dial-up links aggregation; here's a snippet
from http://www.nat32.com/nat32e/htm/dialer.htm :
"...However, NAT32 will only bind to a connection if a PPP Client
interface was configured for the particular Windows Dial-Up Networking
Interface over which the connection is established. On Windows 2000
and higher platforms, there exists no way of specifying that a
connection use a particular NDISWANIP Interface."
Since we can't bind a DUN connection to a particular NDISWANIP
interface in W2K, therefore disabling NAT32 from binding itself to
that connection; I guess this is why the bandwidth aggregation doesn't
work.
In fact, I can't even select the DUN connection in NAT32's interface
selection, all DUN connections are stated as not working with "BAD"
status.
Anyway, at the moment, I can only think of 2 ways to do this:
1. Install a linux box, connect the modems to it, and let linux
load-balances the connection. But as I said in the question, her
company is an all-Microsoft shop, so they have no one to support the
box in case of problem.
2. Install VMware server (it's free now) on Windows, install linux on
VMware, dial up the modems from Windows, set Windows' default gateway
to the Linux's VM; then let Linux VM do the load-balance.
Cons: this is not proven, and may take some time to setup, and still
involves non-Microsoft OS.
So that's my problem at the moment :-)
If anyone's got anymore clues, please feel free to share it.
Thanks.
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