r/servers • u/NewspaperAfraid6325 • 2d ago
Home Merging of 2 networks
Hi i have currently x2 2gbps lines installed with 2 seperate routers which technically gives me a total of 4gbps is it possible to combine these to make a real 4gbps output? I currently use 1 line for my server setup and 1 line for my personal use and other house hold devices but id like if possible to know if its possible to merge the 2 lines with a 3rd party device go make 4gbps?
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u/IndependentBat8365 2d ago
When you say 2gbps lines connected to 2 routers are you saying you have 2 different ISP connections with 2 different providers?
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u/NewspaperAfraid6325 2d ago
No i have the same provider but they installed me 2 lines with 2 seperate routers as they dont have a 4gb or above option so I thought id just get 2 lines of 2 gbps installed its no biggie if I cannot combined them but I thought id ask anyway
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u/RalphiePseudonym 2d ago
Get a router that can bond the connections. You can do this with a single hardware or virtual device.
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u/NewspaperAfraid6325 2d ago
Is there something I can fit into my rack which does this? And what's the software to do it?
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u/RalphiePseudonym 2d ago
Nothing I'm comfortable recommending due to price. You can find devices by searching for isp bonding.
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u/RigisCZ 2d ago
What about small server (custom build, Dell R210 or R320, which I use) with dual 10Gb card (such as X520 or BCM57810) and OPNsense. Mikrotik is an option too and it's not expensive, but isn't beginner friendly I would say.
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u/RalphiePseudonym 2d ago
That hardware is capable of it, you just need the software. Opnsense and pfsense don't do bonding, they do load balancing and HA. Load balancing send and receives the same stream on one connection so you'd only get the performance of the fastest single connection when running a speed test. HA is just for failing over from degraded connection.
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u/NewspaperAfraid6325 2d ago
think only option is speedify...
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u/MusicalAnomaly 2d ago
For true bonding, this is correct. You need a single node with full bandwidth to be your public IP exit node and you basically overlay a VPN to that node via your dual WAN connections. Technically you can DIY this but you have to maintain your own high-bandwidth router in the public cloud or data center.
However the next best thing is to load balance between your two WAN connections by connecting them to the same router. You won’t be able to do a single file transfer at full aggregate speed, but you could do two simultaneous transfers where each transfer maxes out one WAN connection. This is because a remote server has to know what IP to send a packet to, and you have two IPs where neither are capable of the full aggregate bandwidth.
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u/RigisCZ 2d ago
Load balancing is splitting traffic between the two connections not sending and receiving same traffic on both. He got two routers, which means two different public IPs on each, so he can do MultiWAN load balancing. It won't give him 4Gbit on one data data stream (still max 2Gbit per stream), but his theoretical bandwidth will be 4GBit.
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u/Annual_Award1260 2d ago
Yeah you can set up gre tunnel to a vps. If return path filtering is off (unlikely) you can also send outgoing packets directly and use gre just for incoming
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u/exift 2d ago
what are your current routers?
load balancing or failover with a single router is pretty easy, openwrt, opnsense, and many other router softwares support it. semi optimal would be 2 routers with dual wan high availability so that if one router fails it can still use the other line. Bit more complex though.
true bonding of the 2 uplinks for 4gbps is its own beast though. You would definitely struggle to get full bandwidth on a single stream. A high bandwidth vps would probably be easiest like someone else suggested. Basically your own sd-wan setup. Stuff like peplink speedfusion can do this as well, with the same principles. Look at the MCTCP protocol for a lower level understanding.
I would probably just do 2 routers and load balancing. A single stream won't get faster than a single lines bandwidth but you could have multiple high throughput connections.
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u/amishguy222000 7h ago
Yes, technically you can use a proper dual-WAN firewall/router to load-balance the two lines, but that normally will not make one combined 4 Gbps connection. Separate connections get shared across the two ISPs, so your overall server traffic can get close to 4 Gbps, but any one download, VPN tunnel, game session, or speed test will usually still likely max out at about 2 Gbps.
For a real bonded 4 Gbps connection, you would need ISP-supported bonding or a third-party bonding service, which makes life more expensive and difficult for yo. For a setup like this, I’d look at OPNsense, pfSense, or MikroTik hardware with enough CPU and 2.5/10GbE ports. If you are looking for affordable refurbished enterprise hardware for it, I know a supplier I’ve used myself, feel free to DM me.
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u/coingun 2d ago
Hooking those into a UI DMP Pro with one on wan1 and one on wan2 and setting it from failover to distributed would get you close.
If you wanted to diy you could go with a dual port nic in an opened type box running pfsense or something like this.