Nexland Pro800Turbo Load Balancing Router Review

An anonymous submitter writes "Found this review today over at OverclockersClub.com. Apparently this router can load balance two broadband connections like DSL, Cable, or T1. The router can also act as a backup feature in case one of the broadband connections goes down, the router will automatically switch to the connection still working." At $400, it's not gruesomely expensive either, and I guess if you're willing to pay for two broadband connections anyway... The spec sheet (PDF) has more information.

Re:Load balancing

[march]

I'll respectfully disagree.

Why would this make cable/telecom companies "beat their heads" over this? It gives them more business. In fact, I bet it would increase their business. Joe Blow orders *two* cable modems because he wants twice the bandwidth. Same wit DSL.

Yes, for redundancy, you'd be better off with one cable and one dsl, but still, that means that there will be more business for the big guys overall.

Re:why not a software solution?

[bozoman42]

All you actually need is Squid. Set up a user-visible cache, and parent it to two non-caching proxies on each line. Then just adjust the weighting based on the relative speeds of the lines. I'm assuming this is all the functionality this little router provides.

Re:why not a software solution?

[Hoonis]

Here's a software solution from my company (Rainfinity) that doesn't use BGP:

http://www.rainfinity.com/products/rainconnect.htm l [rainfinity.com]

Runs on linux, does other rather clever things (can rewrite DNS replies as well for *inbound* load balancing). It works nicely with either a commercial firewall (checkpoint/raptor) or IPTables; or can be used just as an HA router in front of existing firewalls. A feature this crowd will like- you can do everything via a command-line interface if you don't like GUIs too!

DB

Cheap way to upgrade!

[Aliks]

I'd been wondering about load balancing a pair of ADSL lines. This confirms my hunch.

In the UK at least, the basic home service is 512k down, 256k up and a single IP address. The cost of 1mb down 256k up is much more than twice the basic cost, presumably because it is counted as a business service. Getting 2Mb down 512k up is a lot more again. It would be far cheaper to get 4 lines converted to ADSL with the added bonus of some redundancy.

As far as I know the pricing is set for market segmentation rather than for any inherent extra costs for the fatter pipe. The same home user is unlikely to hog the extra bandwidth, they will just get a better service.

Anyone know any real objections to this from the telcos perspective?

Re:why not a software solution?

[JPriest]

Well in a way you could if you had static IP's and a domain, each line from the provider will use its own IP address. You could just give out different IP address from the DNS servers or have multiple A records for the domain. Different requests will use different lines.

Why Not a business Model solution

[rochlin]

The idea of having two (for example) cable modem connections with one as a backup is poor because you're dependent on 99% the same infrastructure for your backup conneciton. Anyone with a cable modem (or DSL) knows that when there's a failure it's almost always a prob with the ISP so your backup will be screwed if your primary is screwed. Ditto on DSL.

So how about the bandwidth doubling idea? Great, but wouldn't it be better if the ISPs just changed their business model on cable modems? They already have with DSL. With DSL you could just upgrade to a higher level of service (more bandwidth) instead of consolidating two lower bandwidth lines? With Cable modems, the situation is even simpler. At the modem level, the bandwidth is almost always throttled back. Doesn't it seem idiotic to consolidate two bandwidth throttled lines instead of just opening things up a little? How bout 3Mbps instead of 1.5 (for most AT&T subscribers).

It just seems inane to come up with a hardware or software solution for something that's really a business model issue.

Re:why not a software solution?

[phoneboy]

> Why not a software solution, instead of dropping 400 bucks?

Because not everyone has the time/engery/experience/hardware necessary to set this up on a Linux box. I was running my home firewall on a Linux box until I got one of these things. It has issues, but it generally works and requires less fscking with.

I've had one of these since October, and they're not bad. I got one of these and one of Nexland's wireless access hubs as "review units." I wrote up a review [phoneboy.com] on the product, which details the pros and cons of these devices.

-- PhoneBoy
"I say live it or live with it." -- Firesign Theatre

DO NOT BUY THE NEXLAND PRO800T

[marcjohnson]

First, about the review: no stress, stability or soak testing. Didn't test WAN connections from different providers. Didn't even try different packet sizes during pings. Routers have industry-standard tests to run them through, and going through the HTML pages and transferring a file does not constitute a router test/review.

Warning: we have heavily tested the Nexland Pro800T. The Nexland Pro800 Turbo +hard+ crashes daily and looses packets. Once a week it looses all its config. We have had the box replaced multiple times - no help. We have tried their old and newest firmware. No help. It is getting so bad, that Nexland actually shut down their user forums (see www.nexland.com) because so many people are complaining!

I +do+ not recommend the Pro800 Turbo router. The only way we can keep the thing up is to have an automatic ping/tcp/http tester that power cycles the darn thing when it crashes multiple time per day.

Anyone else experiencing these issues?

There is another option. Compex has redundant + load balancing router (NP15-BR). See:

http://www.cpx.com/proddetail_b.asp?c=Broa...%20 Ro uters&e=49

Anyone use this?

Hope this helps,
Marc