Combining Broadband Cable & DSL

[jameslee]

Does anyone know anything about this, or where i could look for more information:

If you have two broadband connections (e.g. cable & DSL), can you set it up so that the fastest connection to the destination is used to download the desired information?

My DSL line isn't scheduled for installation until September 3rd and i've been suffering from withdrawl since June 21st. To hash the downtime, i've ordered broadband cable which can be installed as early as August 8th.

Come mid-September, after i have both technologies up and running, i'd like to not only do speed tests on the connections but also see if i can setup the previously described scenario.

Thank you in advance for your help, James

[DoPeY5007]

I was always wondering the same thing.....

you can try to get two routers on one network but the might cause some problems.....

[Jeffbx]

Well, you could get a load balancing device, but they're not exactly for home use. Higher end routers (Cisco) and W2K server allow you to do some basic load balancing also. W2K LB is called NLB - Network Load Balancing, but I THINK it requites W2K Advanced Server.

Check it out:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q232/1/90.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=NLB&rnk=5&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q240/9/97.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=NLB&rnk=15&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000

[jameslee]

I think the Cisco router is out of the question, but i had Windows 2000 Advanced Server installed for a while and remember seeing the load balancing options.

I'll look into that and post any interesting findings.

[hapoo]

take a crappy pentium computer... install linux put in 3 network cards (2 for each connection and one going out to the network). You can do ANYTHING with linux.

[mcdanelz]

I am using NIC express to load balance one of my machines. It make an array out of your network cards. seems to work well. at the moment it looks like it puts all the inbound on one card and all the outbound on the other "I only have 2 nics in it atm". I think this is from ipmetrics but I don't remember for sure.

[revil]

how much does ip metrics cost?

[speedracer120]

It's amazing how people think alike. I've been wondering about this for the longest time too. Too bad I can't afford to spend $100/month for a broadband connection.

[revil]

hmm, i downloaded the demo version of ipmetrics, and installed it. I didn't know what i was doing and i screwed things up. how did you set yours up mcdanelz?

[jameslee]

The Windows 2000 links seem to only discuss incoming connections, perhaps for services running on the server?)

IP Metrics seemed to concern both incoming and out-goiing connections, but the rest of it might has well been written in sanscript (sp?).

Does anyone know for sure (or at least is fairly certain) that IP Metrics would balance/optimize outgoing connections to ensure them the fastest route to their destination?

[attgig]

if you're gonna do that, i think the $$ is more wisely invested in a larger bandwidth DSL line. About the same price, don't have to invest in the extra hardware, and benefits of a 'business' DSL line, like static ip, faster download...etc/

[jameslee]

I thought of that too.

The main reason i would like both DSL and cable is that i want the reliability and consistency of the DSL, but also rapid connections to cable users.

When i had DSL, my ping time to my brother and girlfriend's brother (100 miles away) on the @home network were in the 300-400+ ms! When i had cable (@home) as well, the ping times went down to <100 ms.

With the situation i described above, i'd have the R&C of the DSL and speed to the growing @home network to boot.

[mcdanelz]

Rev Evil I really don't remember having too much trouble I just selected my two nic as an Array and that was it... I think.

[mcdanelz]

I am pretty sure Nic Express (ipmetrics software) does balance both in and out bound traffic but as to whether or not it actually looks for the fastest route in and out or not but from the looks of it for my setup it just puts inbound on one nic and out bound on the other. But both of my nics are just hooked to the same switch so there isn't really a faster route.

[revil]

Originally posted by mcdanelz
Rev Evil I really don't remember having too much trouble I just selected my two nic as an Array and that was it... I think.
thanks, i had already figured it out. but i was too lazy t say so. i forgot to reconfigure my routing to use the virtual adapters.