Topic: VPN's and bandwidth throttling

[Razen]

Hi,

Quick question. I am interested in using E-Smith for a client to have VPN for his sales men, no problem right? However, the manager also wants two partners plus the accountant to VPN into the network. His question, which I hadn't really thought of, was about bandwidth and if it could be controlled to give one partner more than the other and whatever is left to the accountant and the salesmen to use. Can this be done w/ pptp or IPSec?

Thanks,

[Andrei]

Bandwidth throttling really has nothing to do with the VPN side. It would be more of a router/switch issue and even then setting bandwdth limitations on a per user basis may not be possible. You should also ask if each of these users will be accessing the network via broadband or dial up.

[William Davison]

I understand via a contact with Smoothwall (linux firewall software) that it may be possible to do some bandwidth managment on a linux box, but they have not done it either as far as I know.

You could use packeteer http://www.packeteer.com/  but these boxes cost around £2000+ ($/€3000)

[Darrell May]

A cheaper alternative may be to implement a Nexland Pro800Turbo ($629 CAD/$399 USD).  The Nexland ISB Pro800turbo load-balances 2 independent Internet connections making them seem as one. You will get a noticeable bandwidth increase.

One WAN connection is your primary defined by your domains DNS entries.  This is the public domain name interface all default traffic enters.  The second WAN interface is the backup and can be load-balanced as a percentage of the total.  Instruct your unique users to VPN in using the backup WAN IP address.  Instruct all standard users to VPN in using the public domain/IP.  Set the load-balance percentage as meets your needs.

See this link for details:

http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/howto/nexland-howto.html

Darrell