Application Load Balancing With Nth Method Multiple Gateway Internet Networks

One contribution of technology to improve the stability of connections in a network is to use three Internet Service Providers (ISP) and make the proxy as load balance. Load balance has several methods such as per connection classifier (PCC) and Nth. But PCC has advantages and disadvantages. PCC deficiency allows overload in one ISP channel so that there is an imbalance in bandwidth usage. The results of the study on the implementation of load balancing using the Nth method on multiple gateway internet networks in the Jayapura District Head Office is that there is a comparison of the quality of connections from before and after load balancing implementation. Tx/Rx at each ISP and LAN show the incoming throughput already has the same average value, that is, the average obtained by the ISP-A (Rx) receiver is 34.75 Mbps, ISP-B Rx is 30.12 Mbps, ISP-C Rx is 7.17 Mbps and LAN transmitter (Tx) is 72.03 Mbps. The use of the Nth load balancing mechanism in each ISP is more optimal than before the use of load balancing Nth, and the acquisition of throughput that has used load balancing is balanced between the three ISP.


INTRODUCTION
Load balancing is an innovation used to overcome the burden of network capacity with users, and additional networks [1].Load balancing can be applied to HTTP servers, proxies, databases, and gateways.In the load balancing process, there are four methods that can be applied using Mikrotik, one of which is the Nth method.The Nth method is known as the load balancing distribution method which is the development of the round robin load balancing method.The Nth method can work with principles per packet load balance or per connection load balance.The Nth technique is known as the round robin method in dividing the load.It divides evenly distributed data packets on each gateway.Existing packages will be grouped into several groups in a row, ie package 1 enters group 1, package 2 enters group 2, etc.Later each group will be issued via the exit interface which is available sequentially, group 1 will exit through interface 1, group 2 will exit through interface 2, etc.With load balancing Nth, it can be a very effective technology solution for utilizing internet bandwidth without having to occur inequality [2].
The Jayapura District Regent's Office as a Regional Government Institution that has internet services utilizes wireless technology as a means of improving services.The importance of internet access speed as a means of communication, the use of internet access needs to be regulated so that it is convenient for its users.Internet access speed will certainly relate to the amount of bandwidth available in a network.The importance of the speed of internet access has made the Jayapura District Office use three Internet Service Providers.To get maximum internet access speed, load balancing settings on bandwidth are needed so that internet traffic in a network does not experience overload.
To minimize the occurrence of these problems and keep the internet network connection stable and smooth, the three connection lines are connected to a device, the router, the Load Balancing technique is applied to the router [3].Mikrotik is one router that can implement load balancing techniques.This study applies a proxy with the nth load balancing method on an internet network that has three line gateways through a router.The load balancing mechanism, which is the proxy, will mark packets that want to access the internet, then equalize the load on the three ISPs that are distributed through LAN and wifi cable networks [4].Then choose which ISP path to pass.So it is expected that the load on the three ISP lines can run effectively.
In research [5] analyze slow internet access due to other users who download by comparing the Simple Queues and Queues Tree methods.While in research [6] to overcome the company's loss problem because there is no even distribution of traffic load to the router using NDLC and Load Balancing Nth methods.Research [7] analyze the comparison of PCC, Nth and ECMP load balancing implementation.

METHODS
This study uses the Nth load balancing method.The tests carried out in this study are downloading, uploading and streaming video before and after load balancing is applied.To find out the quality of the internet network that has been loaded balance, Quality of Service is tested with parameters of delay, throughput, jitter, and packet loss.Quality of Service is a method of measuring how well the network is installed and is also an attempt to define the characteristics and properties of service [8].The test results will be analyzed to see the of applying influence load balancing.

Research material
Research material plays an important role as a reference in the implementation and testing of the systems needed for the results analysis phase.The collection of data needed as material for this research was obtained from sources namely literature studies such as papers, 161 reference books, and related research results.From these data then an understanding of the system needs that are built and their implementation is obtained.

Research tool
The tool used in this study consisted of hardware and software.From the needs analysis conducted, it can be identified the need for hardware installed in the internet network at the Jayapura District Head Office as seen in Table 1.The Nth method which literally means that N is a number of integers (0..15) and thus the size of the number.Nth is a method that uses matching algorithms for a number of numbers, each of which is given integer value, with the x package received by the standard rules in the method.A number of these numbers indicate how many servers will be implemented in the load balancing technique.Then one of the 16 available counters can be used to calculate each packet sent and received [9].
The software requirement used to help this research is MikroTik RouterOS ™ which is the operating system to build a router, Microsoft Windows is the operating system for admin and client and Winbox Mikrotik is a software to access the Mikrotik Router.

Research flow
The research work will be carried out in accordance with the research flow chart found in Figure 1.

Identification of problems
The problem identification stage is the stage to determine the background of this research.The problem identification stage is done by examining cases on a computer network system that is related to the use of Nth load balancing techniques as a solution to the problems encountered.After finishing reviewing several cases, a list of problems is then sorted according to the level of sensitivity of the problem.

Reference library
After the problem identification is complete, the next step is to conduct a literature study.The literature study in question is to study and review various literature in the form of books, journals, theses, articles, and online media related to load balancing.In addition, the literature is also used as a reference source of research references.By collecting and learning many references, it is hoped that the research conducted can produce the best solution that can be done to solve existing problems.

Topology design and network system configuration
After a literature study, the next thing to do is to design and create the network topology used in this study.Topology is created and configured according to the research material that has been obtained.The purpose of topology design and network system configuration is to facilitate when load balancing methods are implemented and tested as research objects.

Research object
The internet network infrastructure in the Jayapura District Office is shown in Figure 2. The internet network is built with a combination of wireless connection, fiber optic, and LAN using TVRI towers as communication relay centers at several points (Sentani, Sentani Timur, Waibu, Ebungfau, and Sentani Barat) and for unattainable points, the TVRI relay tower is connected via satellite and distributed using a wireless connection.

System design
The test will involve internet users, namely all employees in the Jayapura District Head Office.Research using Nth load balancing method by combining three internet connections from three Internet Service Providers is done in order to add internet speed and reduce traffic load on one line.The system is carried out with a traffic balancing system for user requests or traffic balancers.The system will reduce the router workload so that the network conditions are relatively stable.All internet requests from users will enter the router that has been configured with the nth Load balancing method.On the router, there will be connection marking so that the connection path can be passed through the first gateway, the second gateway, or through the third gateway.After connection marking occurs, routing will occur into the routing table, so that the three available gateways can be used simultaneously.
Figure 3 Load balancing design at the Jayapura District Head Office Figure 3 is the Nth load balancing design in the Jayapura District Head Office which has three gateways for internet connection.Based on the Nth mechanism, for the topology above each traffic/data packet that passes will be divided into 1, 2, and 3. Then for the ISP-A link will be used for packet 1, the ISP-B link will be used for packet 2, and link ISP-C will be used for packet path 3. The client on the network will have one gateway, and the gateway will determine the packet will pass through the ISP line.The load balancing is implemented in a series consisting of every and packet and is realized in an integer series.In the load balancing method, the incoming data packet is marked as a variable n in the integer data type.Load balancing applied in this study on 3 internet data lines (connections), which means that n will be worth 3.Then, integer values form queues 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Load Balancing is the ability to reduce the load from a process to an application to several different systems so as to increase processing capability on incoming requests.Load Balancing will send some processing from request to a system to other systems that will be handled simultaneously.With load balancing has the advantage of reducing the amount of processing that must be carried out by the main receiving server, allowing the receiving server to handle more requests from the device that processes all loads.

Network configuration
Interface initialization is done by giving names to each interface according to its function.The commands performed are as follows.Mikrotik initialization commands are shown in Figure 4.

IP Address Assignment
At this stage the IP address is given at each interface, both on the proxy, and from the client side.To assign an IP address to the router is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5 Giving IP Address

Client's IP Address Assignment
In Figure 6 shows the marking form command before the data packet enters into the prerouting policy, and shows how to create an address in the Nth and its merge with the mark function.Where the "LOCAL" interface with destination port 80 is given a connection mark with the name "lb_1" with the value nth is 3.1 which means the value of every = 3 packet = 1 value.
Figure 6 Giving the IP Address of the client

Routing configuration
To forward the marked package in the mangle process, a new rule is created on the routing table so that it can pass the data packet to the ISP gateway that matches the marketing package created at the mangle stage.The routing configuration command is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7 Routing configuration
The next command is to add a gateway without routing mark, and this gateway is used as a default gateway for all traffic that is not through load balancing.The above command is used to define the gateway path used for each packet that will exit the local network.In this code, every packet that has an odd mark will be passed through the next-hop gateway 10.0.0.1 (ISP-A).Whereas for packages that have mark event will be passed through the next-hop gateway 172.16.0.1 (ISP-B).

NAT configuration
The last configuration in Nth load balancing is NAT or in Mikrotik better known as a masquerade.This serves to be able to change the packet source address, namely the client that 165 has a private IP address so that it can be recognized on the internet by translating it into a public IP address.The NAT configuration command is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8 NAT configuration
The above command shows the configuration of the Nth load balancing to do the NAT process for each packet header that comes out of the router interface, namely the ISP-A interface, ISP-B interface, and ISP-C interface.

Testing before load balancing Nth
The test was carried out with five trials on the ISP-A, ISP-B and ISP-C servers by looking at the results of the download, upload rate and ping time before load balancing was carried out.Testing is done using the speed test application.The test results can be seen in Table 2.

Testing after load balancing Nth
From the results of the tests that have been carried out as in Table 3 can be seen the comparison of the quality of the connection from before and after the implementation of load balancing.The test shows that on the download side is 39.23 Mbps and upload is 65.06 Mbps, ping is an average of 38 ms.Furthermore, the average download was 36.03Mbps, uploading 67.90 Mbps and ping on average was 37 ms.Based on Table 3 shows the quality of internet connections has changed a lot on ping data, upload data, and downloads.On download, testing can be seen the speed increases when the load balancing system.Connection quality can be seen from the size of the roundtrip and the number of lost packages.The smaller these two numbers, the better the quality of the connection.The ping utility in Table 3 shows small results.This can be explained that Nth load balancing can balance the connections between the three ISP.

Test results for the deployment of Packet Load Balancing Nth
Parameters tested on the balance of connections at each ISP gateway Nth load balancing is the average spread of packet transmitted (Tx/upload) from each gateway.In Table 4 it can be seen that Nth load balancing has successfully spread the same packet on all three interfaces.This result shows that the Nth load balancing method can divide the transmitted spread evenly at each gateway.

Figure 1
Figure 1 Research Flow Chart

Figure 2
Figure 2 Internet network infrastructure in the Jayapura District Head Office

Table 1
Equipment installed in the Jayapura District Head Office

Table 2
Test results before load balancing

Table 3
Test resultsThe Nth method after load balancing