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[Bill Moo]

I have a Firebrick 2900 and when I connect my second pppoe connection to it the system becomes unstable meaning I can only run with a single DSL connection. My DSL lines are from BT so don't provide bonding so I need to configure them myself to load balance, but this is where I'm stuck.

I have of course looked at the Manual it says load balancing can be done but there is nothing else that shows how it is done.

Is anyone able to point me in the right with this please.

--
Bill

[Weaver]

Apologies for the ridiculously belated reply. 

You need an ISP that supports bonding otherwise this isn’t going to work. Your machines on your LAN and the Firebrick itself need to have addresses that are on both WAN links’ networks otherwise the downstream traffic doesn’t know to use both lines.

Talk to AA or whoever about this and they will help you with the config. I can show you a snippet of config which is a group of <ppp /> elements, one per line.

[Alex Atkin UK]

You need an ISP that supports bonding otherwise this isn’t going to work. Your machines on your LAN and the Firebrick itself need to have addresses that are on both WAN links’ networks otherwise the downstream traffic doesn’t know to use both lines.

I think you are mistaken, it clearly states the Firebrick can do NAT so should easily be able to load balance multiple WAN connections.

[Weaver]

You’re right. I was thinking about full IP bonding with load-splitting per flow, so that say a single TCP connection goes at double speed. I don’t know what is supposed to happen with the downstream at the two ISP’s ends though. It makes my brain hurt and I defer to you.

[Alex Atkin UK]

What should happen is both gateways are assigned the same tier so traffic will NAT in a round-robin fashion with each alternative session being assigned to the next gateway.  Its invisible to the LAN side except on the rare occasion you have a website that uses your IP address as a method of security for your session (bad practice IMO) as 99% of the time all you care about is the data arrives from the router, how it arrives is of zero interest.

One thing that dismays me about the Firebrick is how complicated it seems to be to setup.  Its simple compared to other devices of its class I suppose, but having to visualise everything via the XML file makes it a no-go for me.  If I wanted to do everything the hard way I'd use a stock Linux distro like I did decades ago on dialup.

[Weaver]

Some misunderstanding here. The Brick has the same web GUI with knobs and buttons as any other firewall-router. These knobs generate XML which you can later view or edit in the Brick.

I just prefer the XML because I’m an old hacker - I can read it, edit it offline, diff it, archive old versions. I’ve even written an XML preprocessor - versions in AWK and in iOS Shortcuts - which processes the XML, takes ifdef-style directives and can be used to convert an FB2700/2900-format file into an FB2500-format one by taking out references to USB/dongle-related elements. XML is for me the absolute killer advantage of the Brick if you have a complex config. But that’s just me.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Some misunderstanding here. The Brick has the same web GUI with knobs and buttons as any other firewall-router. These knobs generate XML which you can later view or edit in the Brick.

I was basing it on looking at the demo UI on the 2900 and couldn't find the settings.

[Weaver]

Under Config > Edit :



And here’s a little snippet of XML:

Code: [Select]

<ppp name="PPP1" port="Port-WAN" vlan="101" username="cwcc@a.1" password="pass" graph="Graph-PPP1" lcp-rate="1" lcp-timeout="5" mtu="1500" auto-percent="84"
    comment="Modem=ZyXEL VMG1312-B10A custom firmware MTU 1508; line=BT 21CN ADSL2; PPPoEoA; assumed PDU size=1500 + ovh.=32; using protocol efficiency factor = 0.8844339622642; Modem load factor=95%"/>
<ppp name="PPP2" port="Port-WAN" vlan="102" username="cwcc@a.2" password="pass" graph="Graph-PPP2" lcp-rate="1" lcp-timeout="5" mtu="1500" auto-percent="84" comment="Modem load factor=95%"/>
<ppp name="PPP3" port="Port-WAN" vlan="103" username="cwcc@a.3" password="pass" graph="Graph-PPP3" lcp-rate="1" lcp-timeout="5" mtu="1500" auto-percent="84" comment="Modem load factor=95%"/>
<ppp name="PPP4" port="Port-WAN" vlan="104" username="cwcc@a.4" password="pass" graph="Graph-PPP4" lcp-rate="1" lcp-timeout="5" mtu="1500" auto-percent="84" comment="Modem load factor=95%"/>


[Alex Atkin UK]

Not sure how I missed that.