Load balancing internet feeds and QOS

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dsalch
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Load balancing internet feeds and QOS

Post by dsalch »

I am going to be setting us a new internet feed, and would love to use gargoyle to accomplish this, but I am unsure how these things will interact...

The setup:
Incoming internet feed will be two separate DSL lines, one 15/1.5 and one 10/1 (mbps). These two feeds will be connected to a linux system running zeroshell for load balancing. The combined feed leaving the linux router/load balancer will be beamed via wifi bridging to be the feed for a gargoyle wifi router.

At the wifi router running gargoyle, local systems will connected as well as some remote systems vie wifi bridging. This will all be a single subnet on the gargoyle router.

The Goal:
use gargoyle for 2 purposes.
#1 - bandwidth protection for specific streaming services. This is top priority. I currently do this in a simpler setup and have rules to accomplish this well enough.
#2 create a sort of "local ISP" where the remote customers have a guaranteed minimum bandwidth, but allowed to access up to the available max if no one else is using it.

I assume that the "BW minimum" setting of gargoyle QOS can accomplish #2, and I have rules that accomplish #1. the problem is... the load balancing. how will that interact with the rules in gargoyle. it is a session based load balancing, so each session will be limited to the max of whichever line it is assigned to, and they are not equal!

I could work out a way to assign sessions from certain customers to a particular dsl line, if necessary, but would much prefer to allow them to float across both for optimum bandwidth.

ideas?

ispyisail
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Re: Load balancing internet feeds and QOS

Post by ispyisail »

I could work out a way to assign sessions from certain customers to a particular dsl line, if necessary, but would much prefer to allow them to float across both for optimum bandwidth.
Gargoyle does not sadly have a captive portal feature

You can limit bandwidth by MAC address (device) only.

So it will do what you want but not as well as you would like

dsalch
Posts: 123
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 2:09 pm
Location: Tx

Re: Load balancing internet feeds and QOS

Post by dsalch »

I'm confused...

Couldn't I set a group of IPs into a class, and then set the class limits to control them as a group? I'm confused on what functionality is missing.

Lantis
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Re: Load balancing internet feeds and QOS

Post by Lantis »

It sounds fine to me.
What you’re going to struggle with is the fact that you have asymmetrical connections upstream.

I can’t resolve in my head whether you want to use the combined total as a limit (I don’t think so) or the lowest of the two (most likely).
This obviously wastes part of your upstream bandwidth.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

ispyisail
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Re: Load balancing internet feeds and QOS

Post by ispyisail »

Incoming internet feed will be two separate DSL lines, one 15/1.5 and one 10/1 (mbps).
didn't read the whole post

sorry

dsalch
Posts: 123
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 2:09 pm
Location: Tx

Re: Load balancing internet feeds and QOS

Post by dsalch »

That is the dilemma.

load balancing is done on a per session basis
QOS seems to work on a total aggregate basis of all traffic within a class

If the maximum BW is set to the total BW after balancing, then a single session would never activate the QOS, since that single session would be limited by the single physical DSL line.

If the maximum BW is set to the total of a single DSL line, then it would become impossible to spread a single class across both DSL lines to full combined bandwidth.

If there were 2 sessions running at max, load balanced, theoretically each would be assigned a different DSL line, so then the problem becomes unbalanced max bandwidth, do we use the 10/1 or 15/1.5 ?

My biggest worry is that the most important item to use QOS to protect is in fact the single stream up/down for video stream. So, the most important becomes the most difficult.

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