Cable & DSL Merging

I have A cable and a DSL connection, I would like to combine the two networks together, I am not trying to merge the bandwidth, but just to be able to see both sides of my network at the same time without enabling/disabling a NIC card. I currently use a Server NIC Card(dual port Intel), but I also have other computers running Win2k, WinME, WinXP. I use 2- SMC barricades to share both of them right now, each of them has a different Gateway IP address and they both run DHCP. I would just like to be able to run a single NIC card in any of my machines and be able to select which connection that I would want to use, can anyone help me setup this network?

Thanks!

Jim

when u have 2 or more NICs, its called multi homing, so u dont have to disable anyting. Ok so just connect the cables to the server NIC and then set up the connection wiht the internet connection wizard. YOu could have 2 ips for one NIC.

What I am trying to do is combine Both ISP's through a Switch or router maybe? I want to be able to run a Single NIC card and be able to change gateways on the fly(each one of my Routers has a different gateway address, 192.168.123.254 and 192.168.2.1) I tried just connecting both Routers to a Single Switch and I only could see my cable modem, I could not connect to my DSL even though I manually assigned the Gateway as the IP address of the DSL router, can anyone help?

Jim

1. How did you connect the two routers to the same switch? If your cable modem is multi-computer capable, you don't need a router for it (unless the router also has a firewall). For instance, my cable modem can be connected to a switch either through a router, straight-through cat-5 to the uplink port of a switch, or by using a cross-over cable from the modem to any port on a switch. You may not be able to use a standard cable to connect either of your routers or modems to a non-uplink port on your switch (which it probably only has one of). Try putting the DSL where the cable router was connected to the switch. If you can see it now, that could be your problem.

2. Did you try just disconnecting the cable modem and see if you could see the dsl? If you can, then it could be a subnet issue. Are your routers set on a class b or class c subnets (255.255.0.0 or 255.255.255.0)? If they're class b, they could conflict because they are in the same subnet (for some reason I've noticed that some routers don't like this, not sure why).

I connected both cable and dsl modems to the WAN ports of the Routers, I then used the uplink port of the Switch and connected it to a port of the Cable router, I then connected a crossover cable from the DSL router to a port of the Switch, Both routers have DHCP enabled and subnets of 255.255.255.0 and one of the routers (cable) is 192.168.123.254 and DSL is 192.168.2.1 . When I typed in Ipconfig to get a IP, I only could get an IP from the Cable router, but is showed the gateway address of the DSL router(cause that was the Gateway address that I setup in my config when I tried to use my DSL connection.

Jim

Does the manual for either router say you can connect it to a regular port with a crossover? You could try putting the DSL router connection in the uplink and the cable modem directly (don't use the second router at all) into the switch with the crossover (if it is multi-computer capable, mine can handle 32 machines without a router). I'm not sure if the same would work with the DSL modem, because I've never messed with one too much.

Well, I will have to settle for a switch on the fly program called Multinetwork Switcher, it allows to look at multiple configurations and select them on the fly. But, after I talked to SMC, they had no solution to it but suggested that I turn off one of the DHCP servers and assign static IP addressing on one of the networks, and that worked with that utility, here is a screenshot of the utility:

I also connected a crossover cable from the cable router to the cable router.

Did you mean cable router to dsl router, or the other way around?

It didnt matter, one of the four ports of the Cable Router to one of the Ports of the DSL Router, using a crossover cable. I turned off DHCP on the DSL router, it made the difference, so basically it is like going from one office building to another office building, so the network switcher does the trick, looking for a cheaper one though, $36 per license is a little steep, got about 6 differnet progs to try now.

I figured it out!!!

I finally figured out how to use BOTH networks at the same time(Win2k/WinXP/WinNT), The process is as follows:

1) Turn off DHCP on one of the two routers
2) Hook up a crossover cable between one port on each router
3) Assign a static IP(private IP addr) to the primary IP section of the TCP/IP stack, with the default gateway as the IP address of the Router that you will be using to access the internet
4) Enter the DNS server IP addresses of that ISP's info
5)Click on Advanced button and enter a 2nd IP address, the IP address that you will be using on the secondary network(private IP)
6) Enter the other Gateway address(2nd router's IP address)
7) Add NetBEUI Protocol to the Stack( If you want to be able to share Files and folders on the network) If not, you will not be able to see the shares, and this should be added to each of the machines on your network
8) NOW this is OPTIONAL, cause as of now you will ONLY be able to use the Internet connection of one of the Two ISP's( Cable or DSL) You can install a program called NetSwitcher, available here: http://www.netswitcher.com , this will allow you to save this configuration so that say you want to use the other ISP that you have, you can create another configuration with that ISP's info. After you save the original configuration using the utility in Netswitcher, you will create another one, but the information on the primary IP address will be the info on the other ISP's info( IP address of the private one from the other router as your primary IP address, that gateway address, the other ISP's DNS server info, on the advanced tab, you would enter the information of the other Network's router info(IP address, Gateway Address ), then you would be able to change to that ISP on the fly and still accessing the other network shares, printers etc.

If you need help setting this up, just ask, it took me a little while to figure it out, I posted some screenshots that may help you figure this out.

Jim