ClearFoundation

hello,

i was setting up bandwidth rules by ip addresses ranges for the users on my network and i was wondering, how should i do it if i have lets say 40 users and i have 4 wans, one is 3Mbit/s and three 8Mbit/s,

can i have unlimited access for a certain range that contains 10 users lets say and have 512kbit/s for the rest?
is it possible? or i can only divide what bandwidth i have on the 40 users?

Best Regards

Hi frida,

I am not sure this will help you, but as far as I know (after reading the User Guide for Multi-WAN), I found this:
To give you an example of how multi-WAN works, imagine two 1 Mbit/s DSL lines with two users on the local network. With every new connection to a server on the Internet, the multi-WAN system alternates WAN interfaces. User A could be downloading a large file through WAN #1, while User B is making a voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone call on WAN #2.

With some applications, the download speed for the multi-WAN system can use the full 2 Mbit/s available. For example, downloading a large file from a peer-to-peer network will use the bandwidth from both WAN connections simultaneously. This is possible since the peer-to-peer technology uses many different Internet “peers” for downloading. At the other end of the spectrum, consider the case of downloading a large file from a web site. In this case, only a single WAN connection is used – 1 Mbit/s maximum.
I am no expert at this, but it looks like it means that depending on the type of download, the user / client will be able to use 1 or more WAN connections.
There must be someone out there that has more experience with this sort of thing so I advise you to wait for at least one second opinion.

Greetings,

John

thank you very much john, i know about the multi-wan balancing but what i was wondering about is that if i have 8Mbit/s bandwidth, how can i set the bandwidth rules? should divide the 8mbit/s among the users or i can specify any limit on them let's asy 512kbit/s and i have 40 users?
Best Regards

Hi frida,

It would be better if someone with experience with this would further advise you, especially because I assume that this is for a business situation.
But I will give you my point of view since no one else responded so far ... and maybe it will help you a little.

You have a total of (3 x 8 Mb) + 3 Mb= 27Mb download speed (I don't know your upload speed)
If you use 512Kb x 40 users you will need at least 20,5Mb
I know nothing of load balancing, but I suspect that these users will be spread out over the 4 WAN's by default.
I would advise to spread out the 40 users over the 3 x 8Mb WAN's and use the 3Mb WAN for (other) purposes like VPN, Mail etc.

How you split it up is all up to you, just as long as you make sure that you don't use more than you have.
Realistically it will not happen that all 40 users will be downloading at the same time, but you never know.
Don't forget that the bandwidth rules need to be created with kb(kilobits)/s, but I assume that you know that.

The easiest way to create the rules is to create them for 1 user and then to manually edit "/etc/firewall" and of course it would be wise to test them before duplicating.

That was my 2 cents,

Good luck and I hope I didn't tell you something that makes no sense or will give you extra work.

Greetings,

John