From what I've gathered regardless of the failover method a disconnect will happen no matter what even for a brief period based on the nature of TCP/IP. In other words it can't be avoided. I have a motherboard with 2 nics and it does a decent failover job. I'm wondering what advantage I would get from using the hotbrick router. I've already purchased it and will surely keep it cause I like messing with networking gear but I'm not sure if I'll get any real benefit. True?
the Hotbrick is very configurable, you can blacklist or whitelist with it, you can have different configurations for different computers, it has stateful packet inspection so nobody can spoof a url and it won't slow your data or your cpu down. I was/am interested particularly in whitelisting by url for the trading machine and it does that and easy to configure.. eventually I'll play with the load balancing and whatnot...
Have you looked at building a linux box with redundancy? Linux is much more flexible than Windows when it comes stuff like this: http://forum.pfsense.org/
I've had the HotBrick running GREAT for 15 months... with nearly 100% uptime. Here are 2 tips based on my experience: (1) It will work with certain PPPoE ISPs ONLY if you set the MTU to 1400. (2) The "load balancing" versus "failover" CHOICE is not black and white. If you chose "load balancing" and then set type to "Packets Tx + Rx"... This actually creates a pseudo-failover situation... Since any packet can be sent or re-sent thru either ISP. So you get both double bandwidth and pseudo-failover. (3) But sending packets to a destination thru 2 different ISPs... Can very occasionally trigger security flags at the destination. For example... IB Account Management quickly logs you out if you are "load balancing" by "packet". I have to use dial-up for IB Account Management.
Awesome... that is exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks... I will try the setup you suggested. Thanks
correct. look at it from your brokers standpoint- they are supposed to be providing a secure connection. yet when the dual wan router fails over you are now communicating w/ your broker on a connection that was established on one public IP but just switched that public ip mid connection. I'd be worried if they didn't force a disconnect. if you're really to the point where 30-60 seconds matters, you should look into co-locating a server, business class internet connections ($400+/mo and will still go down), or something called bonded T1's which is beyond me. reality is two reliable broadband connections through a good dual wan is a nice setup for the high end retail, remote prop and a 30 sec reconnect is the price we pay to expect a secure connection. If you really know what you are doing, the suggestion of a linux box as a router and the use of proxies may prevent the disconnect (can't say for sure but my gut says thats your best bet). but you wouldn't be asking if that were the case.