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LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: Top Page TwinWAN Features and Capabilities Setup, Installation LAN Performance Security Test Security Test II TwinWAN Performance Benefits The Final Verdict Important Update Information Xincom online Price Search The Place for Networking
Xincom XC-DPG402 A Budget Wolf in Sheep Clothes
(Review by MS, July 23, 2003)

Xincom XC-DGG402

TwinWAN Router Issues

Having two separate WAN connections theoretically offers twice the throughput of a single connection. However, there are a number of issues to bear in mind. First and foremost, it is not possible to use the dual WAN feature to speed up a single file download, each download has to go through its own WAN connection. Programs like Flashgate or Download Accelerator can theoretically solve this issue and double the bandwidth if the files are downloaded from different servers. Unfortunately, Flashgate still does not improve the situation since it will default back to a single WAN port. Download Accelerator, on the other hand, is capable of truly combining the bandwidth of both WAN ports and, thus, in situations where there are caps in place, double the bandwidth of a single connection as long as the servers can keep up with the requests.

With multiple users hanging on the same router, load balancing will automatically toggle WAN requests according to the availability of bandwidth. That is, if a certain number of requests is already going through WAN Port#1, the next requests will be routed to WAN port #2 and, thus, conserve bandwidth on the first connection.

Redundant / Backup WAN connectivity

One of the more interesting possibilities with a dual WAN configuration is to use two separate ISPs with, if possible, two separate physical connections. This way, if one of the providers experiences technical difficulties, there will still be 50% of the total bandwidth available, which, in most cases, will suffice, even though it may cause some minor inconveniences.

A second back-up is often present in form of a serial port to be used with a dial-up modem. This way, even if a fiber-optics cable used by both ISPs is severed by e.g. a construction crew, in most cases, the redundant phone network will provide an independent back-up loop to the outside world, even if it is using a modem with the known drawback in speed.

Xincom XC-DPG402

Light gray with a white front plate and the necessary status LEDs, the DPG402 could almost be considered handsome. The model number stands for a dual port gateway with four 10-100baseT LAN ports and two 10baseT WAN ports (nay, we made this up but it's an easy one to remember).

Before we go into further details, here is a short glossary of some of the terms that will pop up again in the review:

PPPoE: Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet: combines the Ethernet protocol with the Point to Point Protocol for internet access and allows several users to share a single outside (WAN) connection via Ethernet (LAN).
DMZ: Demiltarized Zone; one or several computers outside of the firewall for unrestricted access (and vulnerability).
DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol; allows dynamic assignment of IP addresses.
Virtual Servers: The Virtual Server principle allows partitioning of any physical server into several independent virtual subunits.
NAT: (network address translation).
PAT: (port address translation).
NAPT: Network address and port translation.
VPN: Virtual Private Network; A VPN can be used to establish a 100 % secure connection between two computers via the internet. Protocols used are Passthrough support for IPSEC, PPTP, L2TP.
IPSEC: IPsec supports two encryption modes: Transport and Tunnel. Transport mode encrypts only the data portion (payload) of each packet, but leaves the header untouched. The more secure Tunnel mode encrypts both the header and the payload. On the receiving side, an IPSec-compliant device decrypts each packet.
PPTP: Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, a new technology for creating Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) , developed jointly by Microsoft Corporation, U.S. Robotics, and several remote access vendor companies, known collectively as the PPTP Forum.
L2TP: Layer2 Tunneling Protocol, an extension of the PPP protocol using the best features of both PPTP and Cisco's L2F protocol.

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