Got an idea, need suggestion or advice

[Prepared]

Some of you know that I'm working on a bunch of shamans and a mixed team of classes. An issue that I've run into while boxing a lot of characters has been that during a big battle, all characters can get disconnected at the same time. This happens more often at about 40 characters at the same time. I've dropped down to trying to box 36, then trying 30, but it can still happen usually during Wintergrasp when there are a lot of players around casting various spells, etc. Now keep in mind, I have all my graphics turned down for all of my instances across all of my computers. I'm not running anything I don't need outside of the game. I'm using only 3 AddOns along with Octopus 1.3.2.

My idea is to have multiple Internet cable services to my house. This would allow me to use a router for each Internet Service Provider. The major issue I see with this, other than it costs more, is that the machines connected to each router would only know about the IP addresses of the machines on that network. So Octopus wouldn't be able to connect to the machines on a different router that is connected to the other service provider. In solving that, I would think a 2nd network card in each machine would allow connectivity to all machines so that Octopus would be able to connect to all machines. The other way would be to have a wireless router that would allow connectivity to all machines while the network card in each machine controls how they would connect to the Internet through the router used for the service provider they are attached to.

If anyone has any other ideas, suggestions or constructive comments, please post.


Thanks
Prepared (multiboxer of some Horde characters on Aegwynn)

[algol]

I am not a network administrator, but it sounds like a subnet problem.

Alternately, couldn't you just set the gateway IP differently for each group? I have, dunno, probably three routers working on my home network at any given time. They don't fight, or at least they don't anymore - it's a configuration issue, not an insurmountable one. You connect all three ISP gateway devices to the same network and use an additional hub / router (or more) to connect everything. Each then has an IP on your LAN, and a computer will connect to the internet through whichever you give it an IP for.

[mooglej]

I never used octopus so I haven't really kept up with its configuration methods. But you could buy 2 commercial routers, Linksys dlink etc, and configure 1 with a private ip of "192.168.1.1" and the second as "192.168.2.1". And on each of those, configure a static route so A will connect to B, and B will connect to A. They are very easy to configure.

The other problem with your trying to do, if you configure it like this where router A is on a Billy bob's cable connection, and router B is on Joe Smoe's DSL, both ISP networks will use a common routing protocol called OSPF (Open shortest path first). If both ISP networks are configured, chances are you will end up using only 1 connection to send and receive to the source destination IP address, no matter how many connections from your home network you provide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Shortest_Path_First

A way around this would keep your 2 networks apart from each other, but can octopus send key information over the internet, or does it require private networks? If it could then you'll have to configure port forwarding information on your 2 routers.

Never use wireless, hubs, or commercial Linksys dlink etc workgroup switches for the ammount of devices your are talking about. These devices share throughput across it's connections limiting your further. But chances are your bottle neck would lie in your connection out vs. your home network. You can call your ISP and usually "upgrade" your bandwidth. Unless your on a DSL connection, then your pretty limited based on your location. Moving from a residential packages to a more business package.



Hope this helped you some.

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-homed

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/157025

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...ulti-homed&lr=


I dont know for sure but MAYBE get two seperate 1G switches, connect together for a lan. Have output of each switch also go to a seperate router and the routers to the internets. 2 switches and 2 routers needed. Otherwise there are products with two wan ports (not cheap).

You have 40 accounts that you run seperatly now?

You might also talk to Blizzard if they send to much information to a single IP they might think its a farm or something and have some auto shut down, tell them whats up.

[mikekim]

algol is correct.. All you need to do is have the multiple connections on the same subnet, disable DHCP on the routers and assign static IP and DNS to each computer, pointing each relevant PC's gateway to the router you want to use for your outbound connection. I have used this method for A gaming suite in a hotel room where we had 12 PC's and 3x 8mb ADSL connections. Having different gateways is only an issue if you are trying to talk to machines on different subnets (as they will all be on the same network range this works really well for programs like ocotopus/keyclone.HKN).

I have attached a quick diagram to show what i mean. DHCP is enabled on router 1 to allow for other machines to connect to the network and still access the internet (ie laptops)

any probs give me a shout

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well ya that seems a lot cheaper then my suggestions .....

[Enndo]

Dunno if you have cablevision in your area but right now they are offering 100mbps down and 50mbps up for $110 you might wanna look into that and use one high speed switch with it.

[Owltoid]

I'm a bit out of my league here, but you could use HKN as your key broadcasting program. It will work on "remote" computers through using IP addresses.

[CommanderChaos]

The main thing you have to remember is that you have to have a router that is intelligent enough to know when one of your routes to the internet is down. This is the key. As Mooglej suggested, this could be accomplished with the help of your ISPs (if they are small enough to care This may be costly even if they are willing to do a special setup for you, but frankly, most common providers won't even have the capability to provide an OSPF setup like that using standard DSL installed equipment. They'd need to have some expensive hardware at your home that terminates each of your even more expensive connections (think T1, if you know what I mean).



You should look into setting up a PC specifically for routing, using something like m0n0wall or pfsense. You'll need to set up this router between your game machines and your multiple ISP connections. The router needs to have code running to keep track of which routes are up, and you'll be good to go.

[warwizard]

Can you list your current network setup?