[sllug-members]: Multiple DSL Lines

[Mac Newbold]

Today at 5:41pm, Adam Barrett said:

> I am running two servers (currently) hosting a couple of small
> domains, however, I hope to increase my overall bandwidth (up mostly)
> to the servers as one of my sites continually maxes the single DSL
> line I have now.
>
> I would love for the two lines to act as 1 (1 IP etc) but then I am
> not terribly worried about that either, I can split the two current
> servers to each line if need be.
>
> What I really want to know is if this will help my overall traffic to
> the sites? In other words, if someone starts a massive download on the
> first line will other people be able to connect to the same server on
> the other line and still see decent speeds?

I'm not sure, but I think it may be possible to have multiple conflicting 
A records for your domain names. If it is you could list both IP 
addresses, and it could use either (generally it will choose randomly 
between them, I think) which would give a rough load balancing effect for 
incoming traffic.

Your outgoing traffic that is a response to an incoming request (like 
anything your servers hand out) will go back out on the same connection 
where it came in. If the one line gets maxed, anything using the other 
line will see better performance than it does now.

> Thanks again for all that everyone has helped with so far, I hope this
> will come in handy for more people as Fiber is not yet an option to
> about 80% of this valley, and the other options are not grand either.

One other option I would urge you to consider is colocation or a virtual 
private server of some kind. If you're serious about hosting (I once used 
to do it over DSL too), it's much better to get your box somewhere that 
your end of the connection isn't the bottleneck. I've got my stuff at 
XMission and love it. The other bonus with that is you get your DSL line 
back for normal use, and probably don't need the expense of a second one. 
The cost of colocation is lower than you might think, starting at about 
$100/month at many places I think. Some places you might look into are 
XMission, Linode, Verio, Rackspace. There's a list of places here too: 
http://www.utahcolocation.com/ . The virtual private server may or may not 
meet your needs. I presume you're doing multiple domains and want root 
control of your stuff, so that eliminates many other hosting options. A 
virtual server won't let you use your own hardware, and you only get a 
slice of a box, but it is less expensive. I'm sure others have ideas here 
too.

Besides the bandwidth benefits, you'd also get better uptime for power and 
network, unless you've already got on-site UPS and generator capabilities 
and redundant network connections that get automatically routed around. 
That translates to better sleep and fewer midnight pager attacks, and less 
time spent doing system administration.

Mac

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