FreeBSD router two DSL connections

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at toybox.placo.com
Mon Dec 26 01:47:29 PST 2005



>-----Original Message-----
>From: Danial Thom [mailto:danial_thom at yahoo.com]
>Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2005 7:59 AM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt; Winelfred G. Pasamba
>Cc: pretenda at wrgn.net; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>Subject: RE: FreeBSD router two DSL connections
>
>
>
>
>--- Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm at toybox.placo.com>
>wrote:
>
>> 
>>
>http://www.edimax.com/html/english/products/PRI582.htm
>> 
>> "...Performs Outbound load balancing by
>> session, weight round robin or
>> traffic..."
>> 
>> Note that they say by SESSION not by PACKET.
>> 
>> It's marketingspeak.  They are simply using the
>> term load balancing
>> for a device that doesen't actually load
>> balance.  Apparently
>> they figure that if they say "session load
>> balancing" even though
>> there is no such accepted definition, that then
>> they are somehow not
>> lying.
>> 
>> It's akin to someone saying that "FreeBSD is a
>> kind of Linux" in a
>> sentence that uses Linux to indicate "open
>> source operating systems"
>> 
>> Apparently you never heard the old saying  "A
>> grain of truth is
>> buried in all great lies"
>
>I'm not sure what your primary language is, but
>"round robin" IS packet balancing. 
>

In an engineers treatise, perhaps.

but this is a marketing document and your just assuming
that they mean "per packet" they could have easily meant
that the sessions were round-robined.

>Suppose you have 2 "pipes":
>
>Round Robin:
>
>1 packet to pipe1
>1 packet to pipe2
>1 packet to pipe1
>1 packet to pipe2
>
>Weighted round Robin, weighted 2 to 1:
>
>1 packet to pipe1
>1 packet to pipe1
>1 packet to pipe2
>1 packet to pipe1
>1 packet to pipe1
>1 packet to pipe2
>
>"Per session" balancing may be useful when you
>have paths that are not very "equal". If you load
>balance to different ISPs packets could arrive
>out of order (in fact they are likely to).

You cannot load balance to 2 different ISPs unless
your running BGP I already went over this.

Does this product speak BGP?

Ted


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