1

There are two ADSL modem routers (nothing fancy, TP-LINK) each with a local network of a small number (variable, but usually <10) of computers.

On one network, there is a SAMBA server on Ubuntu 11.04.

The reason for the second ADSL line was to give one building its dedicated bandwidth, so that up / down traffic from the other computers doesn't affect that building.

What are the ways to make this SAMBA server accessible to this second network, while maintaining the advantage of isolated bandwidth?

I've seen Routing for multiple uplinks/providers, but it doesn't seem to be the answer.

2
  • Do you need to keep both networks separated? Is there any cabling (CAT5, fiber, etc.) between buildings?
    – gravyface
    Dec 29, 2011 at 15:19
  • @gravyface technically, not really. The only concern is that high traffic on one ADSL connection shouldn't influence the performance of the other.
    – Gambhiro
    Dec 29, 2011 at 16:44

2 Answers 2

2

First of all you should be aware, that the smb protocol is not encrypted, unless it is ok for you, you might consider other ways of sharing files. (eg sftp) I can think of three ways to solve your problem:

  1. Join both networks and route the traffic of former network A through router A and traffic of former network B through router B.

  2. Connect both networks with VPN or some other tunneling protocoll (there are routers out that make LAN to LAN connections very easy). but you would produce some kind of bottleneck here, so I really would reccommend my first thought.

  3. Give that samba computer two network cards (if you really want the networks seperated). one for the one LAN and one for the other.

A question has been asked and answered on Superuser, on how you connect and use multiple network cards. If you want to join both networks you can seperate them by using different network masks and adress ranges or just by setting different routes. The guide linked in the accepted answer might give you some more info.

3
  • Thank, interesting options. I've never tried either, would you mind adding a link or two to some documentation / tutorial to get started?
    – Gambhiro
    Dec 28, 2011 at 14:45
  • i edited the answer and added two links, i hope they are helpful.
    – Baarn
    Dec 29, 2011 at 15:06
  • You should also be aware that CIFS is NOT suited to be running over non-LAN links (ie latency above several milliseconds) will make it painfully slow to browse shares etc.
    – pfo
    Dec 29, 2011 at 15:13
1

Since you have no physical cabling link between both buildings, your options are a bit limited.

Also, if you're questioning available bandwidth now, adding a site-to-site IPSec tunnel may adversely impact performance as (usually) the up-to-down bandwidth ratio is roughly 5-to-1 in favor of download speeds on your typical DSL connection (5Mbps down, < 1Mbps up).

This means that the site with the SAMBA server will feel it if/when there are many concurrent file transfers to and from the SAMBA server across sites (say if you were planning on mapping drives over the tunnel and users were working right off of the network drives as if they were on the LAN).

Depending on how often these files need to be accessed, you might be better off with an SFTP or FTPS server that you can throttle bandwidth on and/or limit concurrent sessions/transfers.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .