2 Connections, 1 Computer?

[CanaBalistic]

I have high speed ADSL and high speed cable and want to know if there is a way to use both of them to increase performance?

I have 2 ethernet cards.

[Slug Toy]

thats a fairly interesting question. i could imagine that this is remotely possible.

if you have both services active, you have the first step. beyond that... im walking through fog so to speak. my friend (albeit a friend who is comprised of about 98% bull****) was rambling at me about proxy settings and jacking into central service areas... lots of stuff i still dont understand 100%. the overall image i got was that if you manipulate these proxy settings and some ports... you can clone connections through one feed. you might be able to apply this cloning and then supply another feed instead of running through the original.

heres a thought though. if you have an ADSL router and a cable one too... do a little fancy electronic stuff and run both of those into the same computer somehow. i cant tell you how because this is completely... difficult to think about. or, how about taking another phone line connector thing and stick it on top of the raw internet port on the router so you have two plugs going into one router, then run the other line right into the same router.

or you could dig a nice little ditch back to somewhere closer to the source, and hijack the signal...

i have no idea what im talking about.

[AKA_RA]

i imagine if you had a use in mind, like running a game server on the ADSL line and using the cable for everything else that you do at the same time, assuming you could run a dedicated server and not worry about maxing out cpu usage. you owuld prolly need 2 network cards and if you plan on using a router you would need one for each connection. but this is all just my best guess on what to do

[Omega]

I believe that windows lets you link connections together-- so if you have two different internet connections, you might be able to pull it off. I would dedicate one for downloading and one for uploading, if i had all the things i needed (expiernce included)

[silverdemon]

I use two connections within one network, one wireless and one wired (because I didn't want to shut down my wireless...) when I copy some files from one computer in the network to my dual-networked compu it only uses the wired connection...

I don't know if that helps you, but with standard setting windows only uses one connection (I think)

[nil8]

If you hook up 2 ethernet cards and attach a DSL router to one and a cable to the other, I would imagine it would be somewhat random. Whatever service would have the best metric would probably determine which gets used.

I've never heard of anyone trying to converge two separate connections into one under an OS. I highly doubt if XP can handle a challenge like that.

T1 systems do this, but in a very different and unique way.

Slug, your friend is BS. Even if you connected both machines via a proxy you're going to be using the bandwidth of the proxy and dealing with whatever limitations it might have. In the world of increasing speeds for home broadband users, most services on the net still reside on t1 builds, so you might actually be choking your download bandwidth to 1.5 mpbs at BEST.

[Airbozo]

It is possible to do this, but like another poster mentioned it would depend on the network metrics as to which connection would be used. You can play with all kinds of packet switching settings and bridging the lines (not sure how to do it on windows), but basically the system would determine what connection to use based on the destination of the packets.

One note: Be carefull about connecting two different providers networks. They have hardware in place to detect this and will cancel your connections once they see it happen.


edit: (BANG! just like that I am overclocked!)

[m4gnum]

One of my friends was talking about this a while ago. He was going to use a spare box and put a flavour of Linux on it. A quick google came back with this http://www.freestuffjunction.co.uk/bondedcd.shtml but I don't know if that's what he was going to use, or would actually work for you.

[CanaBalistic]

Thanks for the reply's guys. It doesnt really seem like its going to happen. If i cant have 2 connections at the same time, im sure as **** not going to pay for 2 at the same time. I am going to cancel the cable (anyone need a modem?).

[Guttenaffe]

There is a router that allows for duel cable connecions... but I don't think it will let you have DSL and Cable as I think it uses stuff from DOCSIS 2.0 for the boost.

I'm not 100% sure, I've never messed with one of these devices, if you want higher bandwidth look for a FTH network and buy a frame relay BW package.

Edit: did some more looking there are some load-balancing routers out there for outbnd traffic, it wouldn't be needed unless you have tons of users on your home network.