How Can I Load Balance Two Wireless Routers?

Network - WAN Load Balancing with Failover?

• I am stuck with something that I need to figure out how to use as someone spent money in my absense without consulting me beforehand. We have 1 ISP, but two WAN connections. Each connection has its own bandwidth limit and rating. This was setup because one person on our primary WAN trunk, when we had just 1 outgoing connection, used up all of the bandwidth on that trunk and brought our internet at our servers to a complete halt. This was not on our LAN. Right now we have 1 connection that is on failover to the 2nd. This allows us to only use 1 connection's bandwidth at a time. We need a solution that will allow us to failover, but at the same time, load balance between the two WAN ports. This way we double our bandwidth back to what it was, as when the person dropped this in, they didn't add a second line, they split what we had into 2 lines.... This is where my networking knowledge stops, I am not sure the best way to go about this. What is the correct way to do this?

• Answer:

  There are multiple options but they are highly dependent upon what kind of routers & network equipment you're using. It also depends on how the IP subnetting is arranged. I'll assume that your IP's are statically assigned and your either have an IP block that you're using on the internal network or you have a router doing NAT. My suggestion would be to find someone familiar with your routers and ask them or contact a local network engineer with some cisco experience and discuss per packet load balancing. This really isn't a question that can be answered with the information given and is really a rather advanced question for a forum such as this. In the real world people like myself get between $75-$125/Hr to do network consulting, but if you provide us with more information about your network we may be able to assist you.