Fix your internet problems with 4 internet sources using Load Balance Broadband Routers

by +Cesar Anton 

@reicek

Nowadays internet is very important in most people's lives, and the demand for broadband services growing but really high broadband (+20Mbps) it's not available in most places and sometimes the service it's not only slow, but it's fails every now and then, or maybe the internet service is great, but there are just too many people needing too much broadband at the same time, for example, let's imagine modern scenarios:

A couple it's watching a FullHD movie on Netflix in the living room, at the same time they're daughter it's having a Google+ Hangout with 9 friends because they are making plans for the school trip, her brother it's on the next room playing a First-Action-Shooter on X-Box live using headsets to talk to each other, additionally they all have smartphones, that means 4 different computers who are also downloading tweets, checking e-mail, Facebook, Google+ and maybe even updates... it may sound like too much, but it's not such a rare scenario.

Another problem it's when it's critical to always have an available source of internet, like it happens in most businesses, in this case they might not need too much broadband, but they have a lot of people using a small amount, but all at the same time.

Both scenarios could be solved by using a multi-WAN access point, this looks just like a normal hub, but it can handle many (usually 2 or up to 4) internet sources and distribute the resources as needed in an efficient way, more expensive hardware will be better and handling more requests and the same time, and this is the main point we need to take in consideration when choosing the correct multi-wan hardware.

In the house scenario, they could meet their needs with 3 or 4 internet internet services at 4Mbps each, it would be much more efficient (from a network perspective) to use many "cheap" internet sources, this will limit single connection requests, making sure there will always be a "free" one, also downloading something from a P2P source like Bittorrent makes full use of all the available power in a more efficient way by allowing more separate connections.

In the office scenario it might be better to choose a more expensive option since in an office there are going to be lots of different connection requests made by the employees, the amount of broadband will change, but most places just need to check e-mail, register sales, check pages, catalogs, etc... for this scenarios 4 lines with 2 Mbps each will be enough for a lot of employees.

When implementing Multi-WAN it's best to have internet from different company's, this may sound like a problem, but maybe you can hire internet/telephone from one company and cable-tv/internet from another. So if one fails, the other might still work. This will help avoid losing all sources simultaneously. At the office, if you have many telephone lines, you may hire up to 3 ADSL services from your favourite telephone company, also usually offer the best speeds but always hire the last line from a different source, like cable or (if available) the internet from the power lines.

We recommend using TP-LINK Load Balance Broadband Routers, it provides 3 different models so it's just picking up the one that best suits your needs/budget:

TL-R470T+

Ideal for Gaming/House/Small office  applications.

1 Fixed WAN port, 1 Fixed LAN port, 3 LAN/WAN ports.
Suited for UTP network cable up to Cat 5e.
Memory: 4MB Flash, 64Mb DRAM.
Performance of up to 10,000 concurrent session

TL-R480T+

Ideal for Small Gaming Centers/Medium office applications.

1 Fixed WAN port, 1 Fixed LAN port, 3 LAN/WAN ports.

Suited for UTP network cable up to Cat 5e.

Memory: 4MB Flash, 64Mb DRAM.

Performance of up to 30,000 concurrent session.

TL-ER5120

Ideal for Big Gaming Centers/Large Office/Enterprise applications.

Gigabit Ethernet on all ports.
1 Fixed WAN port, 1 Fixed LAN port, 3 LAN/WAN ports.
Suited for UTP network cable up to Cat 6.
Memory: 8MB Flash, 128Mb DDRII DRAM.
Performance of up to 120,000 concurrent session.
350Mbps NAT Throughput.

All these products can be found on ebay, the TL-R470P+ costs about $70 dollars.

Feel free to let us know about your ideas, suggestions, requests, etc at the bottom of this article.