routing problem: how do i balance the traffic?

Greetings,

I'm a student and I plan to connect maybe 20 PCs in my dormitory to
share internet. We have maybe four connections to the internet, one with
1.5 MBit and three with 1 MBit.
My idea is to set up a Linux-Server that should act as the gateway for
all PCs. This gateway then routes the traffic to the routers.
But now my problem: I want to balance the internet-traffic, so that if
for example 10 users are in the internet, every users shall have 1/10 of
the bandwith of all internet-connections, if there are only 2 using the
internet, then everyone should use 1/2.
I suppose that this kind of balacing is handled by the routing-software,
but since i'm new to Linux i don't have a clue, which software could
help or how.

I hope you can help, thanks in advance,

Angus

On Wed, 19 May 2004 11:08:30 +0000, Angus Parvis wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I'm a student and I plan to connect maybe 20 PCs in my dormitory to
> share internet. We have maybe four connections to the internet, one with
> 1.5 MBit and three with 1 MBit.
> My idea is to set up a Linux-Server that should act as the gateway for
> all PCs. This gateway then routes the traffic to the routers.
> But now my problem: I want to balance the internet-traffic, so that if
> for example 10 users are in the internet, every users shall have 1/10 of
> the bandwith of all internet-connections, if there are only 2 using the
> internet, then everyone should use 1/2.
> I suppose that this kind of balacing is handled by the routing-software,
> but since i'm new to Linux i don't have a clue, which software could
> help or how.
>
> I hope you can help, thanks in advance,
>
> Angus




www.lartc.org is what will help you out. "man tc"
You will need to recompile the kernel, and go in to QoS,COMPILE IN all the
things there. Do not leave them as modules.

As to utilizing the three lines:
1. You could start giving people ip addresses in 3 different ranges, and
then route them via one of the outgoing lines, depending on which block
they are in ( 192.168.1 ,192.168.2 and 192.168.3 )

You could also get fancy, setup three routers that balance the load among
them. Then you'd need a 4th as a "gateway" which listens to these three
routers and sends traffic to the least loaded one.

Angus Parvis wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I'm a student and I plan to connect maybe 20 PCs in my dormitory to
> share internet. We have maybe four connections to the internet, one with
> 1.5 MBit and three with 1 MBit.
> My idea is to set up a Linux-Server that should act as the gateway for
> all PCs. This gateway then routes the traffic to the routers.
> But now my problem: I want to balance the internet-traffic, so that if
> for example 10 users are in the internet, every users shall have 1/10 of
> the bandwith of all internet-connections, if there are only 2 using the
> internet, then everyone should use 1/2.
> I suppose that this kind of balacing is handled by the routing-software,
> but since i'm new to Linux i don't have a clue, which software could
> help or how.
>
> I hope you can help, thanks in advance,
>
> Angus

http://www.radware.com/content/products/lp/default.asp