Have 2 ISP's @ home

[Grunt76]

I have 2 broadband connections coming into my home.

I can use both.

Why not?

Advantages would be possibly for example, downloading off one (the unlimited monthly use connection) and gaming off the other, faster but limited bandwidth connection.

But how do I set it up?

 

[JackMDS]

Why Not? Client OS (as oppose to real server OS) can not use two active connection to the Internet.

What can I do? http://www.ezlan.net/loadbalance.html

http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-...Firewall/dp/B000X1B4W4

 

[drebo]

You would need a router that supports multiple WAN connections and policy-based routing. Such routers range from pretty expensive to really expensive. SOHO routers that offer "dual-WAN" do so only in failover mode.

Basically, it's more trouble than it's worth for use in a home.

 

[Grunt76]

Originally posted by: drebo
You would need a router that supports multiple WAN connections and policy-based routing. Such routers range from pretty expensive to really expensive. SOHO routers that offer "dual-WAN" do so only in failover mode.

Basically, it's more trouble than it's worth for use in a home.

OK then... What if I have 2 Ethernets and plug them both directly into my PC... Or one for sharing with the rest of the household through a router and the other directly and then can I set up some of my traffic to go through one ethernet controller and the rest through the other one?

If not, why not?

And if yes, can I not use a PC as an internet server and firewall and somehow set it up to divvy up the bandwidth load? There should be software for this, no?

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: Grunt76

Originally posted by: drebo
You would need a router that supports multiple WAN connections and policy-based routing. Such routers range from pretty expensive to really expensive. SOHO routers that offer "dual-WAN" do so only in failover mode.

Basically, it's more trouble than it's worth for use in a home.

OK then... What if I have 2 Ethernets and plug them both directly into my PC... Or one for sharing with the rest of the household through a router and the other directly and then can I set up some of my traffic to go through one ethernet controller and the rest through the other one?

If not, why not?

And if yes, can I not use a PC as an internet server and firewall and somehow set it up to divvy up the bandwidth load? There should be software for this, no?

As Jack indicated, a client OS CANNOT use two internet connections. To utilize two internets you need a dual WAN router/firewall that can do policy based routing ($$$). I have two internet connections at home for work and use two separate router's on both, if my primary one goes down I just plug my equipment into the other router. The way your wanting to use your dual internet's isn't possible without some quite expensive hardware. Other poster's above me indicated this same thing but you keep asking the same questions when you've already been given the answer?

 

[Grunt76]

Originally posted by: kevnich2

Originally posted by: Grunt76

Originally posted by: drebo
You would need a router that supports multiple WAN connections and policy-based routing. Such routers range from pretty expensive to really expensive. SOHO routers that offer "dual-WAN" do so only in failover mode.

Basically, it's more trouble than it's worth for use in a home.

OK then... What if I have 2 Ethernets and plug them both directly into my PC... Or one for sharing with the rest of the household through a router and the other directly and then can I set up some of my traffic to go through one ethernet controller and the rest through the other one?

If not, why not?

And if yes, can I not use a PC as an internet server and firewall and somehow set it up to divvy up the bandwidth load? There should be software for this, no?

As Jack indicated, a client OS CANNOT use two internet connections. To utilize two internets you need a dual WAN router/firewall that can do policy based routing ($$$). I have two internet connections at home for work and use two separate router's on both, if my primary one goes down I just plug my equipment into the other router. The way your wanting to use your dual internet's isn't possible without some quite expensive hardware. Other poster's above me indicated this same thing but you keep asking the same questions when you've already been given the answer?

That is because I did not understand all the implications of what they stated.

You make it clear: No freaking way.

Thanks.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Use two machines.

 

[alpineranger]

We really ought to have a faq to answer these sorts of questions that seem to come up about once a week.

 

[alpineranger]

oops double post

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: alpineranger
We really ought to have a faq to answer these sorts of questions that seem to come up about once a week.

nobody would read them, i expect.

 

[BoberFett]

I have not done it myself, but pfSense is supposed to be able to handle multiple WAN connections. If you have a computer sitting around try loading up pfSense, it's fairly simple.

 

[Knavish]

A dual WAN router is not really $$$. Compared to the monthly price of two broadband connections, this Cisco Small Business RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router for $138 is pretty cheap.

I might be wrong here, but as I understand it the dual broadband connections will *NOT* let you download 2x faster from a single source. It will, however, speed up your downloads from multiple simultaneous sources (like P2P apps). Right...?

 

[Grunt76]

Originally posted by: Knavish
A dual WAN router is not really $$$. Compared to the monthly price of two broadband connections, this Cisco Small Business RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router for $138 is pretty cheap.

I might be wrong here, but as I understand it the dual broadband connections will *NOT* let you download 2x faster from a single source. It will, however, speed up your downloads from multiple simultaneous sources (like P2P apps). Right...?

Well that's exactly what I need then!! 🙂

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: Grunt76

Originally posted by: Knavish
A dual WAN router is not really $$$. Compared to the monthly price of two broadband connections, this Cisco Small Business RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router for $138 is pretty cheap.

I might be wrong here, but as I understand it the dual broadband connections will *NOT* let you download 2x faster from a single source. It will, however, speed up your downloads from multiple simultaneous sources (like P2P apps). Right...?

Well that's exactly what I need then!! 🙂

That router is good as a failover option (if one connection goes down, other one comes up in about a minute or so) but as a load balancing option, it has a lot of bugs. I use this router as a VPN router as I have dual ISP connections but I use each one for a purpose so I don't actually use this router as a dual WAN router but just for the VPN purpose.

 

[bobdole369]

I've found load balancing far from ideal. Weird things happen - like a web page sets 2 cookies, or 2 contiguous requests come from differing IP's.

Best practice is to define what services go in and come out of each port.

 

[bobdole369]

Just wanted to correct one niggling little detail:

As Jack indicated, a client OS CANNOT use two internet connections

A client OS most certainly CAN use two internet connections, its just that you would never want to. In order to make this happen you need to remove all default routes.

Then you must define each destination route goes out which interface. So to utilize them evenly your routing table should have the even IP's go out the WAN1 - and the odd IP's go out the WAN2 interface. Anything undefined doesn't have anywhere to go so you need to put all 4 billion or whatever IPs in your routing table.

You don't really want to do this.

 

[Grunt76]

Originally posted by: bobdole369
Just wanted to correct one niggling little detail:

As Jack indicated, a client OS CANNOT use two internet connections

A client OS most certainly CAN use two internet connections, its just that you would never want to. In order to make this happen you need to remove all default routes.

Then you must define each destination route goes out which interface. So to utilize them evenly your routing table should have the even IP's go out the WAN1 - and the odd IP's go out the WAN2 interface. Anything undefined doesn't have anywhere to go so you need to put all 4 billion or whatever IPs in your routing table.

You don't really want to do this.

What if I don't want to use them evenly at all but just default everything through one ISP and route only certain specific traffic through the other? Such as, as posted initially, everything from my torrent client through my slower but unlimited-use broadband?

As a concept, it is simple enough... Of course for technical implementation well... I dunno?

 

[kevnich2]

You can't route a program through that, a static route is based on IP address. Torrents go through several dozen - several hundred IP's again - you'd have to manually key in each IP address in order to utilize that.

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: Grunt76

Originally posted by: bobdole369
Just wanted to correct one niggling little detail:

As Jack indicated, a client OS CANNOT use two internet connections

A client OS most certainly CAN use two internet connections, its just that you would never want to. In order to make this happen you need to remove all default routes.

Then you must define each destination route goes out which interface. So to utilize them evenly your routing table should have the even IP's go out the WAN1 - and the odd IP's go out the WAN2 interface. Anything undefined doesn't have anywhere to go so you need to put all 4 billion or whatever IPs in your routing table.

You don't really want to do this.

What if I don't want to use them evenly at all but just default everything through one ISP and route only certain specific traffic through the other? Such as, as posted initially, everything from my torrent client through my slower but unlimited-use broadband?

As a concept, it is simple enough... Of course for technical implementation well... I dunno?

Technically, this isn't that difficult to implement if you've done it before. Policy-based routing can implement this based on source or destination port or address. In Cisco-land, you'd use a routemap. I am not aware of any new routers that cost less than $1000 that can properly implement this. On the otherhand, a used router with 3 ethernet ports can cost as little as $300 or so. No SOHO router on the market will be able to do this.

To make it totally layer 7 aware, you'd need an even more advanced content services switch.

 

[bobdole369]

What if I don't want to use them evenly at all but just default everything through one ISP and route only certain specific traffic through the other?

Routing works based on destination IP's. You can't do this without a dedicated router that can handle it. You would define "x traffic goes through WAN1" and "y traffic goes through WAN2" - then the router needs definitions: "x traffic is http,ftp,telnet,smtp,pop3", "y traffic is all unassigned".
Cisco Routemaps for the win - It'll be a grand, then another couple hundred to write the config.

 

[vailr]

Two PC's connected to two ISP's + KVM switch FTW.

 

[ccbadd]

Get one of these: http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?products_id=209 and run pfsense. I use these quite often with dual wan setups and have found them to be much more reliable than anything else in this price range. You would have to do some learning to get it setup like you want, but then just forget about it.

 

[Rifter]

Originally posted by: vailr
Two PC's connected to two ISP's + KVM switch FTW.

This is probably the cheapest way to do it, after all pretty much anything can download torrents it can be a old sub $200 computer.

 

[Grunt76]

Originally posted by: Rifterut

Originally posted by: vailr
Two PC's connected to two ISP's + KVM switch FTW.

This is probably the cheapest way to do it, after all pretty much anything can download torrents it can be a old sub $200 computer.

LMAO I hadn't thought of that... 😀

 

[racolvin]

This box can do it

It has enough ethernet WAN ports and its capable of policy based routing, per destination load balancing, etc.

As someone else pointed out however, it ain't cheap 🙂