load balance ordinary traffic

[Barney Wolff]

On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 06:56:02PM -0400, Justin C. Sherrill wrote:
> > This is unlikely to work with cable modems.  You're already competing
> > with your immendiate neighbors for a fixed pie of cable bandwidth.
> 
> It'll work just fine; the shared cable line supplies far more bandwidth
> than what several modems will eat, and this area is not oversubscribed. 
> Also, I have a mix of modems - some DOCSIS, some older proprietary
> Motorola, which use different parts of the broadcast spectrum, and so do
> not affect each other's bandwidth, directly.

And all of these will work with the head end at once?  Interesting.

> > However, what you can't do is have
> > a single TCP connection on a single local host use both external lines.
> 
> How about multiple TCP connections on a single local host using multiple
> lines?  I know I could stick particular local machines to a particular
> network gateway, but at that point I could just hook them up directly to
> individual modems.

You could enhance the ipfw code to allow matching bits within the source
or dest port number, as is allowed now on ip addresses.

> > That would require at a minimum cooperation from your ISP which they
> > are most unlikely to provide.
> 
> I work at my ISP.  What's the cooperation bit?

To use parallel links you'd need to run MPPP over PPPoE, on both ends.
FreeBSD can do that, I believe.  Can RR?

-- 
Barney Wolff         http://www.databus.com/bwresume.pdf
I'm available by contract or FT, in the NYC metro area or via the 'Net.