They look as two but speak as one!!!1!

drowd

Ok, so here is my problem. its not really a problem, but more of a general situation. Let me fill you in on the background . . .

So, i live in the houston area and for the last 5 or 6 years we have had SBC Global internet with a 1.5/384 connection. However, people have always raved about how good time warner cable was, and i think it was even voted the number 1 broadband supplier in the US. anyway, not too long ago, time warner started offering 3.1/384 connections for essentially the same price as DSL (actually, it is a few bucks more, but whos counting). so anyway, that just sweetened the deal and we decided to switch.

So, what i came to realize, is that we have already paid for both the cable AND the DSL up until the 20th or so of april (thats when our billing cycle for the dsl will end, and service will be disconnected).

So, the problem i present to you, my fellow icrontians, is this. How can i harness the powers of both my cable and dsl running to my house. and maybe it isnt possible, but i would like to think that maybe for a few short days (or perhaps long because i wont sleep) i could have an internet connection something akin to 4.6 down/768 up. Now, i dont have any super advanced networking devices, but i think i have 3 linksys routers (one wireless), 4 switches (2 4 ports and 2 5 ports), and one shiesty hub. i think i also have a few crossover cables lying around as well.

the only wrench in this whole mess, is the dsl is the kind that requires you to input a username and password in the routers settings to access the internet. the cable doesnt require anything though. its gets all its info from time warners DHCP. ok, so i'm serious, i need help with this thing, cuz i have a limited amount of time.

drowd

also, i refuse to believe that the only way this can be done is with a fancy schmancy router that supports internet connection sharing. there has to be some way i can set policies or gateways within my pc's and/or routers that will allow me to use both . . .

versello

There is no way that I know of for bonding two different connections in Windows (including server).

kryyst

you would need to nics in your computer to take advantage of it. Even then the only advantage you'll get is that you can have one nic say surfing while the other nic is downloading. You can't get them both to work together on the same thing at the same time.

drowd

grrrrrr . . .

citrixmeta

im sure you can do this in Linux, we need trippin here

check this out! http://www.computers4sure.com/product.asp?productID=1150026&affid=874&adid=874

citrixmeta

also try this in Win2k

http://4peeps.com/ivb/index.php?showtopic=4489

drowd

ok, so i played with it pretty much all day. i finally decided that it would be very hard to trick my routers into thinking that they were one router and that they had two wan ports. so, my next course of action was to plug em both into my pc and see what sort of results i could get. so basically, my routers seemed to get very confused with each other, even with dhcp disabled on one of them, but FINALLY i got it to where i could access both of the routers web based interfaces. so, basically, my day consisted of enabling one and then the other, and then trying to create a bridge in network settings (windows). and i found that it WAS possible to utilize both, but it wasnt very practical. basically, the cable took precedence over the dsl if they were both active. because everything defaulted to cable, i had to disable it, and then run certain applications (in todays instance, the lineage 2 beta download). if something had already started streaming from the dsl network adapter, it would continue to do so. so, once the download started, i enabled the cable connection, and then i fired up my newsgroups. i did in fact reach peaks of 600 k/s, but typically, it stayed right around 540 or 560 k/s. so that was fun while it lasted (which at half a meg a second, wasnt that long at all. comparatively, of coure), but the main reason i was interested in this was because if i could get combined upload working flawlessly, i could hopefull host a game server. unfortunately, it was the same. i would open up and seed a torrent through dsl with cable deactivated, then i would turn it on and send something through waste, but unfortunately, that isnt quite what i was looking for. however, it crossed my mind that there might be certain applications (ones that make many connections) that might be able to take advantage of this. perhaps bit torrent or waste. i tried many times today to connect to myself and therefore send to one person in waste at the full, combined speed, but to no avail.

so i guess now my question is . . . . what all does bridge connection do. cuz, for me, it seemed to make some crazy, ethereal network card made up of my two existing network cards and assign it a new ip address. which, when i first saw this, i was like "sweet, its working, everything is working, my two public ips will now stream through this private one". and honestly, everything seems like that should have made it all good . . . . with the exception that it didnt work.

so, those are my adventures in networking. if anyone has suggestions or wants to help explain just what exactly is going on, feel free. i would GREATLY appreciate it . . .

kryyst

bridge connection is used basically bridge two network connections on your computer for the purpose of sharing the internet....

so modem---computer with (2 nics bridged) --- 2nd computer

the middle computer acts as the bridge between the modem and the 2nd computer. It's for those that only have dial-up connection or don't have a router.

drowd

well, its not exactly what i wanted, as there is certainly no round-robin load balancing, but i have at least been able to manipulate my two nic's to get at least a somewhat desireable speed. so, here is what i did.

for some reason, all of my connections would default to the cable connection if they were both active. HOWEVER, if i disabled the cable, and just had the dsl, apps would use it. now, what i noticed, is that a program would be bound to whatever ip it is using, so if i started up everything i wanted to run on the dsl while cable was deactivated, that app would be bound to that program. so, i made two folders for grabit, my newsgroups app, and ran two instances of the program. with cable deactivated, i started 3 streams of a 1-45 of about 90 rar files. as you can see in the image, it was downloading at around 160-180 k/s. then i enabled cable, and in my second instance of grabit, i started 3 more streams. the attached image shows you the sorts of results i got.

so it isnt exactly what i was looking for, and if anyone knows of any programs that will bind programs to a certain nic or ip, lemme know.

just remember, it is a huge pain in the ass, but nothing is too much of a pain as long as it yields more bandwidth . . .

primesuspect

The only way that I know of to do what you're looking for is to use managed NICs and a managed switch (A managed switch is a higher-end switch that has its own CPU and operating system, and can be programmed). For example, you can bond two Intel PRO/100 nics into a trunk and if you tell the switch to do aggregation, you now have 200mb/s TO THE SWITCH.. I think with Cisco catalyst switches you can aggregate wan ports, thus sharing bandwidth on a wan (internet) link. However, you can do this in linux/bsd if you set up a box with 2 nics in it and have it act as the router. As for what program to use to do that, I'm not sure... but I know it can be done.

kryyst

But you aren't getting faster speeds you are only getting more bandwith so your top speed is still limited to whatever your connection type is. The difference is that you can now do more before your speed's drop. So if you are downloading 1 file there will be no difference. IF you are downloading 100 files you'll notice a difference.

drowd

yeah, i realize this, and because typically files are posted in newsgroups in 15/20/50/70 megabyte rar files in quantities of 50-100, i was able to see a huge difference. i guess i am tricking my computer, but when i go to download my linux distros at 500 k/s, its very very nice

kryyst

Yup it'll work great for applications like that where you are grabbing multiple chunks of files. But yeah, not worth paying for 2 lines just for that feature However since you have it free for a bit, leach, leach, leach !

drowd

yeah, last night i was messing around with bit torrent, and there is an option in the client i use, to bind to a specific ip address, so i just opened up two instances of the file (i was just seeding, not downloading) and i was able to upload at about 70-80 k/s. it was very cool. now i just need to figure out how to set up a game server . . .