7800DX 5 Way IPSec Packet Loss and Drop Outs

[cybersquad]

We have 5 x Billion 7800 DX's connected via ADSL2+ accounts at 5 x stores.

We have created a 5 x 5 way IPSec connection so all stores can talk to each other.

The IPSec connection appears to work fine - i.e. you can browse each of the servers at each store, ping internal devices at other sites etc. However it is very unstable. We set a ping from each location to every store (25 way ping) as well as pings to google.com from each store. No stores had any packet loss going directly to Google, but all of the other sites had between 4-8% packet loss over the IPsec VPN over a course of 1 hour.

We have run several tests, including eliminating 3 x stores connections - just leaving a standard 2 x way IPSec connection. This improves the performance with only around 1% packet loss, however as soon as we start adding more IPsec connections, the higher the packet loss at 'all' sites.

One thing we have noticed is that if one of the IPsec connections starts to lose packets, at least one of the other connections will do at the same time - sometimes all of them.

As we have no issue pinging google with no data loss from each site (internet is stable), we can only assume it is something to do with the routers and/or a limitation of their ability.

We tried setting up QoS rules for IPSec traffic to no avail - made zero difference.

Has anyone else setup a 7800 with multiple IPsec connections? And if so, what were the results?

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers!