2 broadband connections on one PC?

[Codeman05]

Hi guys, I have a dumb question :D

We just recently switched to cable as our DSL provider was pretty weak.
But, our DSL line is still going to be up for a couple of weeks, and I have two
NICs in my XP box. So I got to thinking, might as well not let that go to waste and see if I can use both at once.
I know this can be done on a linux box, but mine is currently down for the count for a while, is there anyway to do this in Windows XP.

[FunkDaMonkMan]

This has been brought up before, and I'm pretty sure you had to use a router that supported this. I don't think windows will do it.

[Codeman05]

yea i did another search and this time got back some good results this time. Apparently with software I can bind the connects and double the thorough put but not the "speed"...want I was wanting anyway. I'll be giving this a shot when i make it back to the house. Since this is just a temporary issue for a few weeks I'm not going to buy another router

[bdf24]

What if you put a second NIC in the PC. then run both the dsl and cable to each NIC. Then bridge the connections in Windows.

Would that work or no?

[XWRed1]

No. Bridging is what you'd use to combine two network segments.

If your isp support it you'd be able to bond the connections, but I've never heard of any consumer broadband isps support that.

[unreal]

wow sounds interesting to try, dont think it will work in windows though

[bdf24]

Originally posted by XWRed1
No. Bridging is what you'd use to combine two network segments.

If your isp support it you'd be able to bond the connections, but I've never heard of any consumer broadband isps support that.
Did'nt think it would do it. If I can recall correctly. I believe people have been trying to figure this out for a long time. I see it pop up every now and then around here.

[XWRed1]

Yes, they've been trying to figure it out. You *can't* do it with a random cable or dsl connection because the isp doesn't let you do that. Some isps would let you do it with dialup modems and it is routine to do it with T1s and highend connections. A T1 *is* 24 64k phone lines bonded together.

The best you could do (for download-type traffic) would be to interleave your connections across multiple lines. No single tcp connection would ever be able to be faster than a single line though, but with downloading software you could effectively combine the lines because that would make multiple connections out on the different lines to download. Still a kludgy solution though.

If you were hosting stuff you could do something like a round-robin dns or some other load balancing system, but anyone who wants or needs to load balance probably isn't going to just have 2 dsl lines.