I welcome suggestions of a more appropriate forums for this question, but I
respect the knowledge of this ng so please forgive a somewhat OT post.
My business is served by a business cable connection. Business DSL pricing
has gotten much more aggressive in my area but rather than simply switch
ISPs I'm considering a couple different options:
Load Balancing
I'm considering keeping my cable connection, adding a DSL connection, and
load balancing between the two. This has the advantage of higher
reliability due to redundancy thru two different providers.
Binding/Channel Bonding
I'm considering binding two or more DSL connections together, since my DSL
provider does not offer an upstream throughput option that I'm completely
satisfied with. If it's technically possible (and if my LEC supports it) I
could bind 2 or 3 DSL connections together and the cost would be lower than
or comparable to what I'm paying now for cable, with potentially much better
specs on the connection.
I don't know whether channel bonding multiple DSL connections is a
reaslistic scenario; I'm waiting to hear back from the phone company on
this. I would also consider load balancing a channel bonded DSL link AND
our cable connection to get the benefit of failover if an ISP goes down or
has trouble.
I could set up one of my Windows Server 2003 servers as a router to provide
the load balancing; my SonicWall appliance is currently serving as my
router. Alternatively I could upgrade to a firewall appliance that supports
load-balancing multiple WAN connections.
All thoughts/comments appreciated; it's very possible that I'm crazy.
Thanks in advance,
Bryan
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