Before beginning, I'm totally new to advanced network topics and not working as a professional network engineer or so. Just trying to learn some stuff.
My problem is, I have 3 different ADSL (or VDSL) lines at my office and want to combine them to;
- Increase the throughput
- Load-balancing
- Increase the connection uptime
- Have better management over WAN-LAN connections
To achive this I'm planning to create a network structure as in the following diagram.
So my questions are;
- What is the name of the topology/design that I'm trying to create?
- Is it possible/feasible to combine multiple DSL lines?
- If so, what is the device that I need to put inside of big red circle?
Additional information;
- I need at least 40 ports to connect all of the devices
- VLAN management is required to separate the networks
- Gigabit connection is required to use inside the local network operations
Best Answer
You need a router with multiple WAN ports and load-balancing capability (most business-grade routers will do) and a managed switch for connecting the clients.
The load balancing can distribute traffic to/from multiple WAN links and provide fail over. However, any one connection can only use one of the WAN links at a time.
Depending on the router model, you can set load distribution based on utilization, source address (group/subnet), protocol, ...
If you want more control over the Internet connections you need a decent firewall. There's an extreme wide range of features and capabilities, so you'd need to add your requirements to your question.
A managed switch connects the clients to the router and allows you to set up separate subnets using VLANs. Most likely you'd want to connect each VLAN to the router, so you need to set up a VLAN trunk between the router and the switch.