HACKER Q&A
📣 rcarmo

Dual WAN routers for bonding/load balancing?


A friend of mine (in the UK, but this should be of general interest) is looking for a dual WAN router to make the best possible use of two DSL/cable connections.

Being able to send bind specific clients to each uplink would be useful, but having the ability to load balance across both connections simultaneously on weekends would be welcome.

Any recommendations?

  👤 LinuxBender Accepted Answer ✓
Are you asking about hardware or the routing configuration? If configuration, there are some example scripts on github not tested by me [1] that create a base configuration and have templates for creating traffic balancing rules. To find more examples one could use google to search for "site:github.com linux multihomed routing". Some of these scripts use routing table rules and some use iptables. My personal preference would be to use routing rules as they have a lower CPU impact and keep iptables rules cleaner and simpler.

For hardware I prefer to get fanless mini-pc style routers that have multiple 1gbe or 2.5gbe interfaces so that it's easier to apply rules and also traffic shaping to them. I use protectli devices and load alpine linux on them but really anything will do. CPU speed only starts to matter if they plan on doing network VPN's on their router. If they can find one with Intel server NIC's that can allow for more network driver options but any Intel NIC's would be better than some of the other options that come with some of the fanless PC's in my opinion and experience.

[1] - https://github.com/kristrev/multihomed-routing

👤 leros
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