Two broadband connections at the same time?

[dluby]

Hi,

I have 2 broadband connections in my house (both 2MB download speeds).  One is wired directly into my main PC and the other is available via a wireless router (it's mainly for online gaming).

The questions is can I use both at the same time and if so how?

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question!

Thanks

[Renegade]

This used to be easy to do, but I'm not sure how to do it now...

It's called "binding". You need to bind your NIC to the one connection, and bind your other network interface to the other one. As for which connection different software uses... Not sure anymore.

Anyways, maybe that's enough to help point you in the right direction, or maybe someone who's up on the topic can chime in.

[Stoic Joker]

Cisco Small Business RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router

Features:
Stateful Packet Inspection Firewall for maximum security
2 WAN ports for load balanced connectivity to the Internet
IP filtering allows for restricted access to the Internet and other network resources
Full IPSec Virtual Private Network (VPN) Capability using DES and 3DES Encryption Algorithms
Support for MD5 and SHA Authentications Algorithms
Create up to 30 simultaneous IPSec VPN Tunnels
Management via Web, Telnet, SNMP, and Setup Wizards make setup easy for Administrators
4-Port 10/100 Switch supports Auto-MDI/MDIX and up to 200Mbps of throughput per port

[JavaJones]

Note that, as far as I'm aware, this works the same way multi-core CPUs do: you need multithreaded workloads to see the difference! In other words you can *not* download 1 single file at twice the speed using both connections simultaneously. But you could download 2 files, both at 2mbit/s, saturating both lines, each with 1 file. If that sounds like what you want, then a load-balanced router is probably the best way to go. That way all the machines on the router can benefit, and you're more likely to take full advantage of both connections that way too.

- Oshyan

[f0dder]

JavaJones is mostly right - you can grab a single file using both connections as long as the place you're grabbing it from supports multiple connections and you download with something that supports multiple connections for a single file; most HTTP servers support this, and bittorrent definitely does.

But you can't bundle two physical lines into one TCP connection.

Btw, the wireless connection for gaming? Is that stable and low-latency enough?