Can I combine Cable and DSL together??

[AnimeKnight]

Like the topic says..
currently i have cable connection at home but since work is giving me a deal on DSL i am thinking about getting a DSL as well.. is it possible to use it simutaniously (spelling?)? As of right now i have 3 computers hooked up on a cable via switch with 3 different ip address... if this is possible am i supposed to get a router?? or something else? thanx in advance

 

[CTR]

That is an interesting proposition. I am not aware of any CPE router that has both DSL and cable interfaces. But you could get a router with multiple routed ethernet interfaces and use external CPE for each connection. Then you could do load balancing from the router.

Or you could hook both CPE's (both are routers hopefully) into your switch and either multi-home your PC's or route your individual PC's to either the cable or the DSL CPE as the next hop.

How much do you want to spend?

 

[AnimeKnight]

Huh??
sorrie i am a newbie in networking..
what is CPE???
and can you explain a little bit better??
i am kinda lost on the explaination..
i am thinking maybe spend about $150 or less.. of course the cheaper the better...
thanx

 

[Wizkid]

Just hook the cable up to one computer and the dsl up to the other two or vice versa.

 

[AnimeKnight]

i know.. that's the easiest way.. but i wanna see if it's possible to connect simultaniously that way if i want to download something from internet it would choose the best connection out of the two or even combine the speed ( i doubt this one is possible) just wanna to see if it's possible and try it out that's all
any more suggestions???

 

[AnimeKnight]

anybody else??? please help me

*****edit******
whooo oooh i am officially a senior member now

 

[digitalman]

Much like the multilink modem services (useing 2 modem- each dialing into a ISP account and then traffic is split between the 2 connections) what it appears that you want is a setup that will split up requests amoung your connections and help increase your speed. the important thing that you need to keep in mind is that when requests are made they are done from an IP address. unless your provider supports splitting traffic among 2 ip addresses, this is going to be an expensive task to accomplish. Personally i do not know of the hardware that would allow you to do this. What i do know is that it isn't going to be an easy setup and would require a fairly complex system. Also, in the computer industry, often times complex setups like this don't come at a cheap price either. Good luck in your search though, you never know with this forum, just when you think you can't- someone proves you wrong.
dm

 

[AnimeKnight]

someone suggested having 2 nic cards in my computer..
would that work?
one nic card connected to the cable modem
the other connected to the dsl modem

 

[TerreApart]

In my humble opinion:

If you are getting a good DSL deal, i would stick with the DSL and pay a few dollars extra to upgrade to the next bandwidth(i.e. from 256 to 512... etc)

DSL will in my experience have a lower ping, and when upgraded have a more reliable upload/dowload bandwidth than cable(evenings and weekends stink on cable). Why spend the money twice, besides all the config nightmare you propose?(business use i could perhaps justify what you suggest, but for a home user ACKK!!) When you could have an excellent highspeed low ping DSL connection, that does not go down everytime some fool digs a garden in the backyard.(cable users understand this last part)

Good Luck...

 

[digitalman]

<< someone suggested having 2 nic cards in my computer.. >>



in theory, you would be connected to both services, but just becouse you are connected to beth doesn't mean that you computer would split up requests and use both services to maximize you speed. if one ip address makes a request, the second one isn't working in tandem with it. therefore they don't go out and similtanously work on bring back a request. to make this would you would need something that would divide the request and distgribute parts of it to each ip address.

 

[AnimeKnight]

The reason I am getting both DSL and Cable is that from work they going to hook me up with DSL for free thru some kinda deal between the dealer and my work... and the thing with cable is that we have a renter in our house and he'd like to hook up to the high speed internet access so we are keeping the cable.. i don't wanna share my bandwidth with him
I want to see if i can use them simultanously because i am just curious if it is possible cuz if it is i could also use the available cable at night to download things that i want with shorter time... Plus it just sound kewl when you are hooked up to cable and Dsl at the same time....
I am not familiar with how DSL setup on window is... i mean.. for cable the way that my computer is able to access the internet is making the computer name to the one @home gave you.. does DSL does that as well?? do i have to change my computer name inorder for DSL to work?? if so.. then the 2 nics is out of the question..
Thanx for all you guys suggestions... anything more suggestions??

 

[digitalman]

i talked to anonther one of the guys in our IT dept that i work with, after much debate, we came to the conclution that the multilink feature under win2000 may work (98 &amp; ME should also work too) the problems with doing it with modems are exclusive as dsl and cable don't have to negotiate authentication as you are always connected. when it boils down to it i am not absolute, but multilink will prob allow it.
dm

 

[Fandu]

First, I would try Multilink. If not that, it may be possible to use a NIC with multiple RJ-45 connectors. This is the same method of load balancing that some corporations use. Each connection from the NIC to the network has 100MBps bandwidth. But the only problem I can see is that the NIC has a single IP address, and I don't know how that would work over 2 different networks.

 

[AnimeKnight]

i wanna thank you all for all your suggestions

multilink feature?? where can i find that??
what you mean by multilink??? is it like hub to hub?

 

[Venomous]

I tried multilink 5 months ago. I too have both Cable and DSL. My cable's download speed is nearly that of a T-3 and the upside blows at 350K.. My ADSL is 768K up/down. I do a lot of online game server hosting and wanted as close to a T-1 as i could get on the Upside.. I spent a lot of time trying this but it wasnt sucessful. I used both 98 and Win2k with no avail. I tried MANY routers, multi nic's, etc.. Another problem i ran into with the load balancing, was PAUSING when hitting IE. It tries to use one of the modems bandwidth more then the other, hardly equal. If you go into the connections part of your IE under tools, you will see Detect my settings. I have tried it with it unchecked and checked. No luck.. I think this is where a REAL CISCO router is needed with multi t-1's and t-3's connected to the back to combine the bandwidth. Its just not possible with 2 modems and a soho router. I wish it did, i was thinking the same as you once. LOL.

 

[spidey07]

Pretty much impossible dude. If you feel like spending 20,000+ dollars for a router to hold a full or partial internet table and BGP peering with each provider (doubt they would, this is a home we're talking about), then yes you can effectively use both links. I've set it up for a few companies.

CTR is correct you could load balance outbound frames but this would not be least cost routing. You would have no control on the inbound frames. What you're trying to do is very complicated and very expensive. Use the DSL for a machine or two and use the cable for the others. If you need to switch then change the ip address on the PCs.

I've actually got 6 routers running BGP in my home but they are not peering with any internet routers.

spidey

ps - when i say BGP i mean border gateway protocol (how internet routers share reachability). To peer is to exchange path information with another BGP router. The router is expensive because of the processing and memory power needed to hold a FULL TABLE. Sorry if I got too deep. I just love this stuff.

 

[Fandu]

Just sitting here and realised that Wingate will to load balancing in software.... It actually allows pretty advanced stuff with the Pro version. So you would put 2 NIC's in 1 computer, then setup both the cable and DSL to that puter. Then you would setup Wingate to use both intrefaces. I'd expect that you would double your throughput both ways when browsing web pages and whatnot, but your download speed for files would be limited to only 1 interface.... but you could always download 2 files, each using a seperate interface and then you would be maxing everything out.