Is it possible combine 2 different internet connections from 2 different ISPs?

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I don't think having two network cards is the same as strapping two internet connections together, which is what I'm trying to do and I think was the original question, in my case it is to increase internet bandwidth as it would be cheaper than SDSL. Having 2 network cards does not increase bandwidth, there must be more to it than that. I have a wireless network and a wired network running off two different network cards, this does not increase my bandwidth. So can anyone answer this question. Can you combine multiple internet connections to increase bandwidth and if so how?

I have a similar configuration. I use one computer on my network as the router using Internet connection sharing, but i also have two internet connections and would like to combine their bandwith. I have a cable modem connection and a wireless connection. It has been suggested to me that a firewall can be used to distribute traffic between the two adapters, but it seems like a very messy solution

You can with iproute2 in linux. While not prepackaged it could be made to run on a cheap old machine. here is the url:

http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html

There's a router/firewall from Netgear with two 10/100 internet ports and four gigabit Lan ports for computers.

It can be used to handle 2 internet connections at the same time and it should be nice to get a fast network aswell if you have gigabit network cards.

http://www.netgear.com/products/details/FVS124G.php

It costs about $165 at Pricewatch.

Dual Wan Routers dont double your 'speed' They increase your bandwidth. If you DL a 2MB file it will not DL any faster with two WANs, but if you D?L 2 such files they will each DL at the same time via balancing..

Russell is 100% right, 2 connections means 2 IP's. if you are downloading a 2MB file, the computer you are getting it from cant sent 1/2 the packets to 1 IP and the other 1/2 to the other... the best you can hope for is fast multiple tasts...

This is pretty much what I want to do. I've been searching for a way to implement load balancing on a WinXP Pro machine. My setup includes two ethernet ports on my workstation, one is connected directly to an ADSL modem, the other is connected to an internal LAN whose router is connected to another ADSL WAN network. I want to have windows use both network connections to download more files at the same time and faster. For example, most websites limit the connections per IP to 2, this could be theoretically increased to 4 by using two separate IPs. Also, fail-over protection would be nice. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

In general you would need to do your load balancing at the gateway/router level and not at the individual PC level. The reason is that standard TCP/IP protocol specs dictate that your operating system only use one gateway to route your traffic at a time based upon the last best known route to the destination.

Because of that your system will not send packets out *both* NIC's to a single destination (at least not if its conforming to standards). However if the gateway/router is intelligent enough to do the load balancing then your computer (and others on the LAN) can work as normal, stay in compliance, etc, while the gateway/router is doing the real work.

You can use either a hardware or software based solution for providing that intelligence. A hardware solution must reside at the router/gateway level but a software solution could exist almost anywhere. Sygate Office Network would be an example of a software solution, but there are lots of others.

Regardless, no solutions that I know of within range of consumers do true multiplexing of the data to increase overall speed. Instead you increase the overall bandwidth available to the network. This is extremely beneficial to businesses and other multi-user environments, but doesn't do much for the individual home user environment as most load balancing solutions use an algorithym that would not benefit a single user doing a ton of usenet downloads for example....even though there are lots of small files being downloaded, and you would think therefore you would utilize both wan connections fully, the truth is that most algorithyms would look at the source headers of the data packets..see that it is from the same source...and still limit you to using only one connection. This is done because the algorithym itself is geared to optimize the internet experience for multiple users..not a single user. So instead of completely swamping both wan connections it would let you have as much as you could get from one while reserving the other for the next source packet. This is not always the case, but most products within the reach of the average consumer that do load balancing do it this way.

-matt

hi frnds
i have two dsl conections , it is connected to 4 +4 pcs,all eight pcs wont use net always,so iwant to use the maximum bandwith available is there any software hardware available,i need help urgerntly,pls send me a reply on iforisaac@gmail.com
thanks for ur advice in advance from my heart
vicky

There is a very good hardware solution for 'multiplexing' several connections, for example, 4x ADSL 512 accounts multiplexed would give you a single 2MB up 1MB down connection, I don't know what the cost is but I believe it's not *too* high as it's aimed at small businesses who can't afford leased lines but need good outgoing bandwidth....

http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/pooled/articles/BF_NEWSART/view.asp?Q=BF_NEWSART_92071

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