network topology questions

[project_x]

Currently I have a single internet provider, but because of bandwidth limitations and and increase in charges for overages, I need to have a 2nd provider to give me enough bandwidth.
Currently, my network is a single domain range 192.168.1.0-255, mixed wireless and wired. My gateway is my current router 192.168.1.1, with additional wireless access points at 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3. Since I'm going to have a 2nd gateway, that I want switch to when the bandwidth limits get close. How would I configure that? Any ideas?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[electron]

You need a router which supports 2 gateways (typical consumer routers do not support this). You could also build your own PC based firewall using pfSense, which supports multiple gateways.

 

[activemind]

Or use one of the atom based micro PCs with Ubuntu and use monowall. (save some power and space since you dont need a whole lot for a router).

Also read http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/monowall-vs-pfsense-713879/

It sounds more difficult if you are not familiar with Linux but in reality its not that bad! Yes, it will take some tinkering to get what you exactly want but much more customizable than any off the shelf solution you would be able to find. If you foresee using this for quite some time and not just a couple of months thing, I would recommend building your own.

Now if DD-WRT or Tomato would offer this feature (maybe they do...), then I would say, maybe that's the route to take but till then this is probably your best bet.

 

[electron]

keep in mind that m0n0wall does NOT support dual internet connections (I have been running m0n0wall for many years, but maybe this is something that changed recently). There are a bunch of SOHO routers on the market which do support dual WAN such as Cisco, Netgear and Zyxel.

 

[wuench]

Just keep in mind that load balancing across circuits has side effects. It is not the equivalent of adding the bandwidth together of both circuits. The routers will typically load balance based on whatever ratio you set, regardless of how saturated a circuit is using per connection load balancing (not per packet). Which means, for example, if you tell it to send 50% of traffic out circuit 1 and 50% out circuit 2 and you play a video and circuit 1 becomes saturated, it will still try to send 50% of the other traffic down circuit 1 and that will timeout.

More complex things can be done like splitting the traffic with policy routing or QoS/Traffic Types, etc. But the preferred method is just to buy a bigger circuit.

 

[project_x]

Thanks for all the replies, I'm not looking for a speed increase, but a total Gb/month increase. Basically when the limit is hit, switch from one to the other.
I think tomato, dd-wrt and openwrt all will do this with an early wrt54g

 

[viroid]

The Sonicwall TZ100 router is hard to beat for what it will do; and at around $300, it's not incredibly expensive either.  The GUI on these is easy to use even for a novice.
 
... I can't post links yet.