[ale] Does anybody have experience with a load-balancing/failover distro?

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Wed Sep 29 10:58:59 EDT 2010


http://linux-ip.net/html/adv-multi-internet.html
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/46735
http://www.neotitans.com/resources/networking/switching-between-two-ISP-gateways-via-ARP.html
http://www.netlife.co.za/content/view/12/34/
http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/113988
http://www.michaelbrumm.com/how-to-aggregate-bandwidth.html
http://minez-inspirate.blogspot.com/2009/07/create-load-balancing-router-using.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Networking/Spanning_Multiple_DSLs
http://chris.olstrom.com/blog/howto/setup-dual-wan/

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 10:39 AM, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Richard Bronosky <Richard at bronosky.com>
> wrote:
> > What you describe is a failover, not a load balancer. If you have 2
> > good connections it would be a shame not to use them.
>
> Well, yes.  The subject did include “failover”.  :-)
>
> While I am quite sure that it would be possible to load-balance with
> NAT connections, I don't think it would be terribly useful.  I often
> see a place that will have a high-speed primary link, and a very low
> speed backup link.  Failover is far more appropriate.
>
> Now, if some place has two identical links that come in different
> ways, way, a T1 from place A and a T1 from place B, and there were a
> way to bond the two together such that they would work as a single
> virtual pipe and subsequently suffer the failure of one of them, then
> I think that load-balancing would be quite appropriate.  But I have
> yet to encounter such a situation, personally.
>
>    -- Mike
>
> > On 9/28/10, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> >> You should be able to do this with any distribution.  You need only to
> have:
> >>   * Setup eth0 with the first connection
> >>   * Setup eth1 with the second connection
> >>   * Setup eth2 as the LAN's RFC1918 space and have it answer DHCP and
> >> do all the "normal" things.
> >>
> >> Now, write your iptables rules for Internet-through-eth0 and create a
> >> modified copy of that for Internet-through-eth1.
> >>
> >> Now, keep a file, say, /var/run/active-connection, that has the name
> >> of the currently active connection in it (either eth0 or eth1).
> >>
> >> Have a cron job that, once per minute, pings the gateway address for
> >> whatever interface is listed in /var/run/active-connection.  If it is
> >> down, then reconfigure the routing table and IP masquerading for the
> >> second connection, mark the change in /var/run/active-connection, and
> >> go from there.
> >>
> >> I'd leverage /etc/network/interfaces on Debian and derivatives.  All
> >> you need to do is hook into that so that "ifdown eth0" and "ifup eth1"
> >> are all you need, and you should probably have it setup so that you
> >> cannot "ifup" on both interfaces at the same time, unless you have a
> >> static IP address from both ISPs.
> >>
> >> I haven't gotten around to it yet, but what I would like to do is
> >> create a little embedded doohickey that will do just this, with three
> >> Ethernet ports (two in, one out) and a USB port for configuration
> >> (serial ports don't exist on modern systems anymore, so might as well
> >> just use a USB port and make it act like a serial port...).  And the
> >> default configuration of the device would just be for a standard
> >> network with two standard DHCP-providing ISPs, such that a "completely
> >> standard" setup would Just Work.  Me being me, I'll probably (when I
> >> get to it) even have the thing create an IPv6 tunnel and advertise
> >> IPv6 connectivity, because I just can't see the point of not doing so.
> >>  :-)
> >>
> >>    --- Mike
> >>
> >> On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 12:08 PM, david w. millians <millia at panix.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I've got a district that is getting a second internet connection for
> >>> redundancy purposes. They would therefore love to have a load balancing
> >>> and failover appliance. Obviously, there are some vendors that have
> >>> products to sell them, and also obviously, they cost money that they
> >>> don't have.
> >>>
> >>> A fair number of districts have used "untangle" before, but it appears
> >>> that they charge for the lb/f capability; it's not included in the free
> >>> download. It may be cheaper for them since they don't need firewall,
> >>> filtering, etc., but free is preferred, since even the box to do this
> is
> >>> a factor...
> >>>
> >>> So, do you know of/have you used any linux distros that do this well
> and
> >>> easily? I'm going to go to distrowatch now, but I just want to know of
> >>> good experiences.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>> David
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Ale mailing list
> >>> Ale at ale.org
> >>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Ale mailing list
> >> Ale at ale.org
> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >>
> >
> > --
> > Sent from my mobile device
> >
> > .!# RichardBronosky #!.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in chains.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20100929/d0246594/attachment.html 


More information about the Ale mailing list