Combine 2 Net Conections for 1 Lan=DoubleSpeed?

[finalpendragon]

Here's the deal, Cox had some MAJOR issues trying to get my cable ethernet connection working properly for some reason they could never figure out. So, eventually, they ended up running a second line into my house and giving me a second cable line basically for free (2 IP addresses, 2 cable modems). They must have fixed something though on the other end, because now, the line that was originally faultly works about 90% of the time. So now I have 2 separate cable connections =]

I'm using a WinXP PC with 2 NICs and ICS as my router for my LAN. What I want to do is throw in a third NIC, double up the bandwidth, and share that with my LAN.

...i havent been able to find info on doing this anywhere... it would be sweet though. I've heard that with Some ISP's this can be done with dial up modems. But what about with Cable access? anybody have any suggestions?

help would be much appreciated =]

 

[nihil]

This can be done. But it does not "double" your actual bandwidth. It just supplies load balancing when the pipes are being used heavily. There are many pieces of hardware that will do this. You would need a dual wan router, something like this for example. You can also accomplish this through software but it is more difficult to setup.

 

[finalpendragon]

Well i'm glad to hear it's possible at least, but I cant afford 400 bucks for a modem like that (as cool as that would be). You mentioned software nihil? Is there any particular ones you can point me to? ...Thanks

 

[Goosemaster]

BAM!

 

[Garion]

A cable system is like one big shared network. The bandwidth on the wire is usually available to everyone, up to whatever your cap is. This means that, typically, you won't see much of a performance boost with two cable modems on the same segment.

The only time you WOULD see a bump is if you're downloading two things at once from two different data sources whose total throughput combined is higher than your ISP's cap. Same with uploading.

For general browsing, you won't see any difference.

If you do want to try this, however, try Fat Pipe Networks.

- G

 

[finalpendragon]

goosemaster, i think what you're showing me is for bridging together 2 LANs so that they can see each other, and not load sharing on 2 external connections.

also, i appreciate the other input, but i'm strictly looking for a software solution at the moment (no money). i got my hopes up though, i installed a free trial of "SurfDoubler"...sucked @ss...back to the drawing bored i guess =\