Actually rdl you have a good point
People interested in load balancing could have a look at these options I've researched below:
A networking engineer colleague of mine suggested Zeroshell WAN balancing:
http://www.zeroshell.net/listing/internet_load_balancing.pdfzeroshell looks the most promising and have a good look at the PDF I've linked as it has an excellent example of the type of situation many people are talking about - two different WANs with a load balancer in the middle.
My colleague also mentioned ClearOS as a possible solution.
He suggested that might be the easiest to set up if I didn't want to outlay any money on new routing hardware to test load balancing (and for testing, just re-purpose an old pc or find the cheapest SFF pc with two NICs).
Here's another software solution I found while researching:
ForceBindIP
https://r1ch.net/projects/forcebindipHere's some practical example here with links to GUI front ends:
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/bind-windows-application-to-specific-network-adapter-with-forcebindip/But that only works if you want to bind *one* particular application to a particular IP address - this wouldn't work for what people are suggesting - you'd need two instances of Alt-Binz running, each bound to a different IP and I think that very much defeats the original request. However, it might suit someone who wants to force all their NSP traffic down one WAN and general browsing down another.
- a another way might be to use Windows' own route tables:
Found online here:
http://superuser.com/questions/224783/how-to-take-advantage-of-two-internet-connections-wifi-wirede.g. If you have a big download and you check that it is coming from a server whose IP address is 10.10.10.199 then add a route in windows routing table as
route delete 0.0.0.0
route add 10.10.10.0 mask 255.0.0.0 10.2.1.1 metric 10
route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.15.1 metric 20
First line will remove your default route. i.e Windows will not forward packets via one interface.
Second line tells it to route all traffic destined for 10.10.10.X here X can be any number between 0-255 to go through interface whose IP is 10.2.1.1. It will also give it a metric of 10 (lower the metric the more preferred that route is).
Third line adds a default gateway. Route all the traffic which you cant find any route command through this interface. It will pass rest of all traffic through 192.168.15.1 interface.
Using the example above, providing you have two separate ethernet adapters (and the key here would be, could you use the WiFi *AND* the LAN port on a laptop at the same time?), make sure the two different modems have different IP subnets ranges.
Using this solution, potentially you could add a route for each Newshost's server - but it doesn't give you any fine control - only by the metric number, the lower the number, the more preferred the route will be.
I also found another piece of software called iNetFusion which *might* achieve a similar result, but I'd have to look at it further, and it's not free.
http://www.clusterlinks.comhttp://www.clusterlinks.com/featuresAlso as I eluded to at the start, a load balancing router will do the job, but there's no way to specify which packets go up which path without adding static routes - which shouldn't be too difficult - again, not a Alt.binz specific solution, but you might be able to add route tables so that one news host routes up one WAN in preference to another.
I've been looking at a Ubiqiti Edgerouter Lite which will load balance two WANs - but I've had no practical experience with it.
This example below, shows a TP Link TL-R480T+ Router which can combine up to four WANs:
http://www.techkhoji.com/how-to-combine-multiple-internet-connections/One important thing to consider - a re-purposed PC is going to cost you real $$ in terms of power cost - as an example, my colleague suggested the following:
If you work on around 130w for a desktop machine (the older they are, typically the more power they consume) at an average rate of AUD$0.28 cents per kWh (that's about average here in my state, but varies all over AU, and of course all over the world) that = ~$320/year to run. An Edgerouter Lite at 5w works out to around $12/year - or about $1 month."
So he makes a good point here, re-purposing an old PC to run ClearOS, Zeroshell or another type desktop PC solution, is going to be expensive in terms of power consumption, where as a dedicated Load Balancing capable router such as the TP Link I mentioned or the Edgerouter Lite, is going to be much cheaper.
I know this doesn't help the thread specifically, but at least I'm looking into some options.
Regards.
