throughput on a fb plus

[r***@irrelevant.com]

Hi.

What is the maximum throughput that a Firebrick Plus can handle? I've
some work to do at a site that uses one to perform routing, fallback
and basic balancing on two ADSL lines, using the inbuilt hub as WAN
side, with a router on each of two ports, and the single port as LAN
to the 100Mbps switch for the local network. At the moment the total
bandwidth of the ADSL lines is around 6Mbps (1+ ~5), but they want to
upgrade the 1mbs line to another (up to) 8Mbps line -which is likely
to give 5Mbps like the first line, or more...

My worry is that this might cause a bit of a bottleneck should it get
very busy, and as the fb only has a 10Mbps hub, not a switch, it's
going to suffer from collision problems too when it gets too busy.

Will the fb handle traffic of this magnitude? And would, say, adding
a switch on the WAN side between the fb and the routers help by
avoiding collisions and doing a bit of internal queuing?

Thanks,

Rob.

[Carl Thompson]

Post by r***@irrelevant.com
Hi.
What is the maximum throughput that a Firebrick Plus can handle? I've
some work to do at a site that uses one to perform routing, fallback
and basic balancing on two ADSL lines, using the inbuilt hub as WAN
side, with a router on each of two ports, and the single port as LAN
to the 100Mbps switch for the local network. At the moment the total
bandwidth of the ADSL lines is around 6Mbps (1+ ~5), but they want to
upgrade the 1mbs line to another (up to) 8Mbps line -which is likely
to give 5Mbps like the first line, or more...
My worry is that this might cause a bit of a bottleneck should it get
very busy, and as the fb only has a 10Mbps hub, not a switch, it's
going to suffer from collision problems too when it gets too busy.
Will the fb handle traffic of this magnitude? And would, say, adding
a switch on the WAN side between the fb and the routers help by
avoiding collisions and doing a bit of internal queuing?
Thanks,
Rob.

Hello Rob,

I have used Firebrick Plus with no problem upto about 7Mb/s, .maybe upto 9M
as long as there aren't thousands of session (such as you get with P2P
software)
The problem appears to be more the Routing core rather than the 10M half
duplex ports. If you are using 2 x AAISP lines then they can bond the
download. without the use of a firebrick. I personally have a 105 but even
that struggles with anything above 12Mb/s.

[r***@irrelevant.com]

Post by Carl Thompson
I have used Firebrick Plus with no problem upto about 7Mb/s, .maybe upto 9M
as long as there aren't thousands of session (such as you get with P2P
software)
The problem appears to be more the Routing core rather than the 10M half
duplex ports. If you are using 2 x AAISP lines then they can bond the
download. without the use of a firebrick. I personally have a 105 but even
that struggles with anything above 12Mb/s.

Hi. Thanks for that. They have the upgrade in place, and new line is
syncing at ~10,000kbps ... nice and fast. I can't actually get
anything over about 6.2MBps on a download on a quick test, and using
both lines, which should be faster still, gives the same, so it looks
as if that's all we're going to get through the firebrick.

I guess I'm going to have to source something else :-( The fb is only
really being used for it's detailed routing abilities, so i guess even
one of the floppy based linux firewalls would do, if i can find a
small enough box to run one on. Any recommends? friendly web
interface needed.. (definitely no room in that cupboard for a
monitor!)

thanks,

Rob