Load Balancing between Cable and DSL Modems

[garnerc]

I am new to Cisco. I am getting a 2651 series router. I do some web hosting using a cable and dsl connection. My question: is it possible to do load balancig between these two connections and use routable ip addresses? Also, can I just use two fast ethernet cards for the router since the dsl and cable modems both terminate into ethernet?

[joneschw1]

No, you cannot do that. You could do something where you set traffic from one server/group of hosts to go in and out the cable modem, and traffic from another server goes in and out the DSL, but you couldn't do load sharing. I assume that they are different carriers as well, so you would need to do BGP to get traffic to fail over from one to other in the event of a failure. This is pretty complicated, and your 2651 probably doesn't have the memory needed to do it. Your ISPs probably won't let you do it either.

[garnerc]

So, is it not possible to load balance outbound? This was what I was most concerned about.

[steveo123]

once you get your cable modem working via the eth0 int and setting up a dialer interface and connecting your DSL to eth1 there would be several ways of load balancing the easiest way would be adding 2 default routes with the same metric, pointing to your two interfaces (eth0,dialer1) running RIP2, and the 2600 will do the rest, other ways like BGP, OSPF, would require negotiation with your ISP.

Regards,

Steve

[steveo123]

Having said that you need to set the DSL router to bridging or use a XDSL WIC for the router.

[wharrison2000]

Way to go! I had not thought of load balancing between two default routes. So here is the question, why the dialer interface? Why not e0 and e1

Good job

Thanks

Bill

[steveo123]

Yes, in your case its eth0 and eth1 because you do not have a ADSL WIC .

[garnerc]

Thanks so much for your help! I am looking to save on bandwidth charges where ever I can!