The hotel I manage has 2 ADSL 512/256 connections from the same ISP. One is used for all user internet access and is very busy and therefore slow, the other serves up the hotel CCTV system so a few senior people can log in and view it remotely, and it is under-utilised.

The head office wants me to buy an expensive Zywall something or other router to combine the connections, claiming it will give us a 1024 connection. This will hit the bottom line of my hotel and hence my bonus.


My questions are as follows:
1)Are ADSL connections really additive in the sense that they can be combined to increase bandwidth? Everything I have read says that the best we can expect from this is a more reliable connection because if one line drops the other will still be available.

2)Can this be done using something like IPCop and a dedicated computer with 2 NICs for the outside and one NIC connected to a hub/switch for the inside?

The head office guy is a total Windows stooge to the point that he says Linux is *less* secure because so few people understand/use it and a whole load of other bunk. Basically because HE doesn't know how to do it he is saying it can't be done, and that is frosting my nipples.

Many thanks for any suggestions/pointers that you can give.

well good old chapter 4 of lartc.org would be the first reference to read up on. now, seeing as you already mentioned ipcop, i would *expect* that you can get an ipcop addon that would implement it for you completely. totally and utterly possible to spread load *and* get more resilience. obviosuly your two adsl connections upstream relate to two seperate i paddresses on the internet, and as such you need to ensure that connections made across one connection stay on that connection, but that's the point of the lartc.org article, marking tcp connections etc...

I received an email from my company's Director of IT regarding my suggestion that we dedicate a Linux/IPCop box to solving this problem instead of spending ~4K US$ on a Zywall.

I will post it below as is but with some personal details removed, please understand that English is not his first language but all his previous emails have been formatted and punctuated properly. I think I have him rattled.


*sigh* I am SO frikkin frustrated with these people. I don't want to go off topic (in my own thread even!). Someone please help me debunk this cr@pola.

yeah he's a prat eh? that said, real routers are very very good of course. if you're going to do it properly, demand somethgin really proper then, like a cisco 1841. they love to go as high as their budget takes them for no good reason. if their budget doesn't go all the way they'll sit in the middle not great, not bad, but still trying to get the shiniest thing possible. ipcop would be great, you'd be fine.

it's their money though, don't fight it too much, and also it's a new technology to learn, another string to yoru bow.

If I were you I would look into using pfsense. I have used ipcop and smoothwall in the past and nothing measures up to pfsense.

no, if you were him, you'd be pissed off at the maangement and have no choice but to give in.