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I recently set up a network which is running "slow" and I can't seem to debug the situation. I'm fairly noobie at networks I'll explain the setup and hopefully you can give me possible solutions.

I have:

one RV042 router/gateway three cisco WAP2-- Wireless Access Points around 10 users (nodes) on the network at any one time two servers,one web server and one file server. two broadband connections. Both at around 10Mbit.

Connected in the following way:

ISP1                        ======ap-001     
    ====LOAD BALANCE===RV042======ap-002
ISP2                        ======      =====ap-003
                                  SWITCH=====file server
                                        =====Web Server

Each AP has a wireless SSID of "DCM" and are set on channels 1, 6 and 11. With the same password, so that if someone walks upstairs with a laptop they dont have to start selecting networks.

I get the one DNS problem which I think is the RV042 doing load balancing quite badly. I also started to implement bandwidth management but it doesn't seem to have done much.

All http/https traffic goes through ISP1, because alternate ips were causing problems with websites and authentication on websites. All smtp/pop3 goes through isp2, and nothing else is set in stone.

I am at a loss to explain what is going on, I've recently started monitoring the devices with cactii so I might be able to attach some graphs tomorrow. From my own machine I was getting around 10Mbps writing and 5.6Mbps reading to and from the File Server.

Load Balancing

I have two ISPs: Digiweb and eircom (based in Ireland). Digiweb: We have a static IP of 89.234.xx.xx on WAN 1 Eircom: We have an IP of 192.168.172.2 on WAN 2 (I tried doing ip passtthrough on the eircom router but for some reason it wouldn't work with the RV042).

I did read that your suppost to use the same ISP for both WANs but I figured if one company went down fail over is kind of useless.

Monitoring

Ok so I've left cactii monitoring all devices. I get constant data from rsv042 and ap-002. But ap-001 and ap-003 are showing gaps in the graphs of traffic i/o. Possible packet loss due to long cable? Nope, because cables are all less than 30m

Abe Petrillo
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  • Sounds like a load-balancing problem. I don't know the RV042 but I did some setups with cisco-switches and sun servers. The main point when using LB of any type is that you have to use the same setup on both ends - else you will end up with strange effects and bad performance. So please provide some details about how you set up load-balancing... – Nils May 31 '11 at 19:45
  • please read edit :) – Abe Petrillo May 31 '11 at 22:14
  • Still not clear in my point of view. What load-balancing algorithm is enabled? In your case a session-based-round-robin might make sense. I don`t know how that is called in your cisco-device, though. Your packet losses migth be due to mismatched lb-algorithms. – Nils Jun 02 '11 at 20:49
  • Errrr... All i know is there is a load-balancing option on the router.http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9925/index.html – Abe Petrillo Jun 03 '11 at 13:44
  • [Link to setting up lb](http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9923/products_qanda_item09186a0080a36632.shtml) I see - "auto" does not say much, does it?-) But from what I see below your router seems to NAT for each protocol that is offers (here: http and https I presume). So maybe the NATTING is the problem? Any experts on that one out there? The IP you enter there should not be the same as the one your router or any other device - but that is just a guess. – Nils Jun 04 '11 at 20:51
  • I have all http and https requests going through wan1... had problems with authentication when it sent requests from different ips – Abe Petrillo Jun 05 '11 at 03:34
  • Does the manual say what the ip-setting for the protocol is good for? And yes - if the lb is not based on session but instead of other metrics (I assume it uses a simple rr per packet) then you might get into trouble on the target-server - especially if the packets arrive there "out of order" (ie. an older packet might arrive faster due to the other way the packet takes). But this does not explain your packet losses... – Nils Jun 05 '11 at 20:31

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