Hello

We currently have 3 ADSL lines from different ISPs. Im thinking of setting up Mikrotik using an old IBM Server, and use it for load balancing. My questions:

Do I need 3 network cards to directly connect the ADSL routers in the PC case?
Do I need to set the ADSL routers to be in modem mode?
Every ADSL line has a static IP provided from the ISP. What about the NAT tables for each line (ex. we have MS Exchange in on ADSL).

Thanks very much

Kostas

hey
yes you do need 1 nic for every adsl, On your second question hmm.. depends if that adsl routers are nated or not. to give you an example i have 7 ADSL links running on a rb600 with a expansion for more nic's it works great the routers i use is cisco adsl routers with no nat i have static wan ip's from the provider and run them directly on the MT with all my firewall rules on the MT. i do nat every adsl interface separately on the MT. There are some rules you have to add to make connections to ssl and thing's like msn work properly if you just balance the links out the ssl connections tends to jump from 1 link to another in witch case the ssl sight will drop your connection instantly so for any persistent link it's good to put a rule to make it run via 1 link only.

To make the system work you can use NTH or ECMP,

ECMP= (equal cost multi path routing) good to use but has some short coming's
NTH = (by counting packets almost like odds and even routing) good to use bit more manual configuration and watch out, if your provider is using cisco router or routers that has (drop invalid packets on) you will have problems if you don't do it properly.

Ps. Not going to put all the configurations on here right now, let me know if you need help setting it up and i'll try take you step by step.

Thank you for your kind reply.

I just bought this: MikroTik Routerboard 450 (MiniRouter Level4).

Is there any guide of settings this thing up using the 3 ADSL lines that I have?

Thanks in advance

Kostas