As given in my previous topic I have 4 x 8Mb/640kb ADSL lines connected to a (non MT) Load Balancer which in return supplies all this bandwidth to my rb1000 unit which then does have to do QoS and routing etc. for connected clients on its local side.
For the queues to work we need to set the proper bandwidth in upload and download to make it work.
But what speeds now to use for calculations?
Contracted with the ISP’s is 8M/640k, this I have 4 times.
Modem connects according status windows with 7.240k/636K, almost the same for all 4 lines.
Real max. download speeds per line I ever experienced to see (or tried to ´pull´ by running multiple downloads from several machines simultaneously and with download programms opening serveral connections to server.) is just coming close to 7Mb. In general I would say 6Mb is the maximum download and only if I open multiple connections.
Which speeds are now to be used in the parent queues or queue types?
In many topics/manuals it is considered to be a known factor what the supplied internet speeds are and the LAN network speeds are more insecure.
But in real live I can pretty much state what my network speed is but about my ADSL lines I wouldn’t bet on any figures.
Also, the balancer makes it looks like I have the full combined speed available for use, but that only would be possible if I can open enough connections through the LB to ever get it towards one PC. (I managed to get http downloads on rare occasions of 16Mb to one PC! But the program opened 40 to 50 connections to the server that were distributed by the LB over the several lines.)
The LB balances on basis of srcIP/prt-dstIP/prt connections where a single connection can never get more speed then one ADSL line can deliver because of the physical limitation of each ADSL line.
So, can I really use the combined speed (in theory 32M/2560k) for calculations or should I take the max. speed of the (best performing) ADSL line for calculations?
My network traffic is never maxing out my network speeds, but ADSL lines are very poor at times in Spain and sometimes we get no more then 4-6MB in total from the combined lines, and clients start complaining (me too!) about waiting times and slow downloads.
Any advice on best strategy on this?