Linksys 10/100 16-Port VPN Router....anybody use this before?

[joshdelcore]

Has anybody used the Linksys 10/100 16-Port VPN Router?
We are a small business with about 20-25 users and I would like to see if we could load-balance 2 different ISP's for both performance and redundancy. If anybody has any other suggestions I would be open to them.

Needs of router:
1) 2+ISP's for performance and redundancy.
2) 1 Web application accessible from Internet/home
3) Possible exchange server hosting (company use only).
4) Possible FTP server for future use.
5) 1 will be dsl/adsl another is ethernet(wireless) but will be also dsl in the future...possible cable hookup too.
6) anything else I might be forgetting.

Any ideas or reviews would be appreciated.
Thanks,
-Josh Delcore

 

[smah]

Are you talking about the RV016? I've used the RV082.

[ul][li]The load balancing features are for outgoing traffic only; incomong traffic won't load balance.[/li][li]The feature set is well rounded -1 to 1 NAT, firewall, vpn, port management, SNMP, etc.[/li][li]The firewalling rules are logical.[/li][li]The VPN client software is free & the newest version works well.[/li][li]Current (and past) firmware has a strange problem with the FTP service when running in load balancing mode that has not yet been resolved.[/li][li]Content filtering is OK, but not great.[/li][/ul]

 

[joshdelcore]

Yes it is the RV016.

When you say load-balancing feature is only for outgoing and not for incoming, is it possible to set up an access rule so I can split different computers on the network to use one ISP vs another? So say 10 computers use ISP 1 and the other 10 use ISP 2 to download but still be autobalnced for outgoing?

Also, I was wondering if one ISP is being fully used i.e. a large download or upload will the next user automatically be switched to the second ISP? How is balancing determined? Hop count, initial bandwidth, free bandwidth, response time or a mixture of these?

Thanks again,
-Joshua Delcore

 

[smah]

It looks like you could do seperate groups that way using the firewall access rules, but then that defeats the purpose of balancing between the two connections? Anyway, if you were to do that, it seems that you'd have to do it by using the different groups' internal IP address (range or individuals).

I've never researched it, but it the balancing seems to be based on the bandwidth settings that you input into the configuration - if the bandwidth ratios are 3:1, then the usage seems to be split 3:1 initially. It must then adjust from there. I really don't know if they publish the algorithms used to balance the connections. The balancing is not really set 'per user', it's based somehow on usage. One user/computer can be using both connections at the same time (unless the firewall rules are set to not allow this as mentioned above). I've seen a case during a repeating ping test that some packets went out on one connection, some went on the other.

 

[joshdelcore]

I just purchased this unit and all seems to work well....extremely easy to set up. I get our second ISP today. So I will let everyone know how it works.

BTW I am going to see if I can set up a Asterisk PBX on this and set the port to QoS...that would be awesome if I could get this to work well with about 15 concurrent calls....anybody have any comments on this?

Thanks,
Josh Delcore