Topic: Dual Internet and load balancing

[msk]

Hi All

Please anyone guide me is there any possibility to configure SME 7.4 machine to handle 2 internet connection simotaniously and we can further configure/allocate bandwidth from link-1 to one group of users and from Link-2 to other group of users.

Regards
MSK

[Stefano]

hi

SME doesn't have such a feature.. you need another product (es. pfsense, ipcop, endian) in front of it

hth

[msk]

Hi

Thanks for your reply, please let me know from any of your suggested firewall will be install/configure of same SME or another machine?

Regards
MSK

[Stefano]

any other firewall must be installed on a separate machine.. I strongly suggest pfsense

hth

[msk]

ok thanks please recomemd which file i have to download from down list
ftp://reflection.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/pfSense/downloads/
 

[Stefano]

before you download it, I think you should read something about it in their site..

only you can know which file you have to download..

[chris burnat]

Moving to General Discussion where it is more appropriate.

[arne]

First of all .. I have never tried or tested Fpsense but its cussin, Monowall, and I see that they cheer the same user manual, so I guess they should have something in common. When I see something new on the firewall side I try to update myself as best as  I can.

One first question is: Tecnically - how does it work ?

Actually not so very advansed or difficult - just a "round robin loadchere" with the restrictions of faunctinality as this will involve.

A quite good explanation is here: http://www.netlife.co.za/content/view/34/ and here: http://www.netlife.co.za/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=47

When it comes to the qustion about installation there is a guide here: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Installing_pfSense

There is described different installation alternatives, where some more "difficult" and possibly more suited for solid states devices ("writing over a disk image").

In the bottom of the guide is also explained the download and installation from an live CD. This should be a quite easy way to install the pfsense on an ordinary PC with 3 network adapters, wan1, wan2 and nat.

The file needed for this type of installation will be the one with the name extension .iso

What is also obviously possible to do (but I have not tested it yet) is to install Centos 64 in the bottom as the host system and then 3 network adapters, Vmware server virtualization environment, and then a virtual fpsense gateway brided over to the two wan adapters. Behind that it can then be installed a virtual installation of the SME server.

In this way it should be possible to build in the properties of the Fpsense gateway firewall (with two wan adpaters) and the properties of the SME server, all in one physical gateway PC.

I have tested and used such a setup myself with Smoothwall and Monowall as virtual gateways, but only with one wan adapter. There should on the other hand be no "reasonable reason" to believe that it should not work with two wan adapters, if fpsence has such a built in "round robin" loadshare.

Of cource it will be less to learn, and to setup, if there is available two physical PC's for the project.

At least it is quite easy to install Monowall from a CD, and I guess this will also be the case for Fpsense (That I have not tried yet.)

Is this off topic for the SME forum ? I dont know. Technically it should be quite possible to give one gateway PC all the properties and functions of the SME server togeteher with the properties and functions of the Fpsense gatway, including the two wan gateway function. Also it should be possible to obtain this by using two different PC boxes and no virtualization. 

For an easy installation on PC, look for the live installer ISO: http://files.pfsense.org/mirror/downloads/

****

Here is actually also a guide how to set up the Fpsense as a virtual gateway. I think I recognize the most of the things I did when setting up Monowall and Smothwall as virtual gateways. I used Vmware server and not the Workstation as showed in the guide, but main procedure seems to be the same. http://files.pfsense.org/mirror//tutorials/vmware_install/vmware.html

Next step after the guide will be to install the the virtual SME server and connect it to internal virtual network. (But as mentioned two physical PC's will be more easy.)