Be Excellent To Each Other

If I get (say) Virgin and BT to whack broadband lines into a building, is there a magic router-box that can load balance them? I've found nothing.

Yeah, this does.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Sh ... uctID=5339

But it appears to be discontinued. Still - they exist.

Oh, there you go. Fill your boots:

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Sh ... goryID=611

I looked at that Draytek but someone said the "dual" bit was just backup. Turned out they were lying.
Good news!

I have one of these and it rocks
http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Sh ... uctID=5267

I don't have two phone line to test, but the WAN config screen looks like this so it seems likely it would work

It is not full load balancing. You can divide different traffic types across the 2 connections etc but what it can't do (unless they have updated the firmware) is truly double up the line. If you have a 2 x 1 meg line the maximum individual download speed will still be 1 meg. But you could start a second download and that would then tie up the second line. So you do have 2 lines but it doesn't work like a full load balancing box that turns 2 x 1 meg lines into a 2 meg line.

And that's what happened on mine when I tried it last June with a wireless dongle.

It is not full load balancing. You can divide different traffic types across the 2 connections etc but what it can't do (unless they have updated the firmware) is truly double up the line. If you have a 2 x 1 meg line the maximum individual download speed will still be 1 meg. But you could start a second download and that would then tie up the second line. So you do have 2 lines but it doesn't work like a full load balancing box that turns 2 x 1 meg lines into a 2 meg line.

And that's what happened on mine when I tried it last June with a wireless dongle.

You get twice the posts though!

That's the problem with two ADSL connections

What Chinny said.

Grim... asked for load-balancing though, not bandwidth doubling for individual requests.

It's not really load balancing though is it? It fills one line, then dials up the other. Load balancing would spread the traffic evenly.

The screenshot above implies better than capacity failover.

Yeah - it also specifies that it has a policy engine driving the load balancing, too. So you can still all your http traffic down one pipe, and all your ftp down another, for example.

Depends what you mean by load balancing. Suppose you link two 8meg lines. No single download is ever going to go faster than 8meg, but two downloads at once can do 8meg each. If (as I suspect) this is for an office, rather than home, then Grim...'ll have lots of different connections active all the time and it'll mostly feel like one 16meg line.

I simply mean it can do better than "fill one line, then dials up the other". At least going by that screenshot.

Yeah, when I said load balancing, I'm happy with 20meg per connection (or whatever), so that Draytek looks like the one. Hurrah!