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Rodrigo Carrilho

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Best practice to manage/merge two ADSL connections

I have 2x ADSL connections and would like to merge both into one router with load and balance features.

1. First ADSL with BT (BT router provided)
2. Second ADSL with Plusnet (Plusnet router provider)
3. Both ADSL routers  will feed Cisco RV325 Dual-WAN Broadband VPN Router RV325-K9-G5 that supports dual WAN.

Will the following scenario work?

- Disable DHCP on both ADSL routers
- Enable DHCP on Cisco router only
- Set fixed IP for Cisco on both ADSL router
- For WLAN service I will connect a Time Capsule to Cisco router and also disable the DHCP on Time Capsule.

- How to deal with DNS servers for the DHCP server on Cisco router?
- Any considerations or advise to achieve/make this run properly?

Thanks,
G
Avatar of gfbarron
gfbarron
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Assuming that the Cisco supports the load-balancing feature you are asking for and not active/standby redundancy only, then it should work.

DHCP options from cisco to routers/modems will work, but you need to setup accordingly. Same with static, i would prefer static IP addressing for this scenario assuming no other devices are connecting to the modems directly.

Cannot comment on time capsule.

for DNS, setup your server/clients with whatever DNS you prefer.  Depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Additional considerations:

If you would like to aggregate/bond the WAN connection, then there is a service offered by TELoIP that might be of interest.

If you have certain levels of high availability/fault tolerance, then ensure the cisco meets those requirements (determine how exactly the dual WAN works).

Again, if you have no other clients connecting directly to modems, then fixed IP addressing would be preferred for manageability, if not, then setup DHCP with a reservation for the Cisco WAN port.

Be careful of your NAT setup if you are trying to access the network remotely for VPN etc.
Avatar of Rodrigo Carrilho
Rodrigo Carrilho

ASKER

Thanks Gerry.

I will check on TELoIP.

We won't use VPN.

Network-Diagram.pdf
Do you need to connect to anything on the LAN remotely?
It depends on what your DSL/Modems can do...
If the Cisco Dual Wan is able to do DSL connections (meaning it has some DSL modems), you don't need any of the other devices. If not, I assume that it expects to have simple modems, so the devices other devices must be configured to be only modems (bridge mode) and should not be used as routers/gateways. If that is not possible, you will end up with two levels of NAT and that is a mess to manage.
Now, assuming that the Cisco Dual Wan is able to use the DSL connections, it may have several modes (load balancing, round-robin, failover etc.). Use any mode that suits your need, knowing that load balancing might be the best to maximize the available bandwidth for your local clients. Aggregating two DSL lines completely to make them appear as a single connection is not doable. A network packet as to use one or the other DSL line, it can't use one line partially and the other for the other part.

Regarding DNS:
You should configure, on the Cisco, each DSL connection appropriately. The LOCAL DNS for your LOCAL clients will be the Cisco device, which will forward DNS requests to the correct DNS Servers. It's its job to do that appropriately. You could also use Google Public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) as static DNS addresses, but that is not necessary.

Regarding DHCP:
You must have a DHCP server (and only one)  on your LAN/WLAN. It is not important which device acts the DHCP server as long as said device is the only one to provide DHCP service and sends correct DHCP responses to incoming DHCP requests (including DNS servers and default gateway, which is the Cisco device LAN interface). It may easier to have a local DHCP server on some real computer running locally (meaning that said computer must always run), but that is not necessary.
Hi vivigatt,

Aggregating two DSL lines is doable, check out TELoIP's website.
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