Need heLp on load balancing and firewall

[cooldude9119]

Hi guys,
I have two internet connections in my office, i want to add them and setup a firewall and assign seperate ips to the pcs connected to the internet with intranet chat also. For this purpose i think i need a server with two network cards and a os i get that but im empty after that, can someone explain what to do to me.

Conditions in office
Nearly 10 laptops and 5 desktops running xp and windows 7
Two bsnl broadband internet connections
i want the server to be a central file storage location for all the pcs
A firewall to filter the traffic
and there should be load balancing between the two internet connections


Please help me in acheving this and suggest me a way

Im always available in skype as mnbk91

 

[wedge1001]

Hi,

i would propose the following setup:

1. Get rid of win XP machines
2. get a separat fileserver, that does not handle any connections with the internet (plus it's saver)
3. get a router-Software and configure it.

So, depending on this propose i would suggest you use pfsense (my favorite) or another fork of ipcop.

(i like pfsense since the community is really helpful and the gui is nice and simple)
Pfsense don't need much ressources.
for your mini network a small atom-CPU should be enough (depending on your internet-speed, you should buy s.th. little bigger)
Just give it 3! Network cards.
One for wan1, wan2 and lan.

You can now configure pseudo-load-balancing by setting up a multi-wan environment with different gateways etc.
You can also handle failover this way.
the setup is quite easy.
here's a small tutorial via Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiiy8YuWHcY

You can look here for more help (or ask me)
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?board=21.0

though you should notice, that multi-wan isn't that easy.
Some sites don't really like having a request on one ip and the following on another. (e.g. exchange really doesn't like this)
so for some sites you have to setup a routing-table to push them through a specific interface.

So. pfesense is also a firewall where you can configure traffic-shaping, or closing up domains. Setting up own DNS-Zones etc. pp

Hum. This looks like i'm an pfsense employee - but i'm not lol ^^'

edit
Other alternatives:
Endian
M0n0wall
ipcop
etc.