Network Load Balancing using 2 wireless cards ??

[harshac]

just moved into a new apt building where are all the tenants are given 802.11g wireless acesss to the internet . I recently bought a laptop with built in wireless support. So my old PCMCIA wireless card was headed for the landfill when I suddenly thought that I can try to use both the connections at the same time. I know there is something called a network load balance built into windows servers which have to NIC cards. I am wondering if the same can be done on a wireless cards and through a registry hack in Win XP Home. I tried this Load Balance Netork in Windows 2000/XP. But it didn't seem to work since there was only activity in only one connection.

Any suggestions ? It will pure nirvana for me if I can get both of them connect at the same time.

 

[Willoughbyva]

I think your ISP would have to give you rights to have two network connections on their network. i thought it was called multi-homeing or something.

 

[JRez]

What kind of backbone is at the end of the Wireless-G connection? NLB may not provide the benefit you're looking for..

 

[harshac]

I think its a T1 or a T3. Anyway, its a new building and doesn't have that many residents in it yet. So I am sure I can get what ever bandwidth I want, atleast for now.

 

[vietofmars]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howitworks/cluster/nlb.asp

I don't think you need it. I don't think you can get faster throughput with two wireless connections instead of one.

Get a 802.11g card if you don't already have one.

found this with google:

If you have an 802.11g network, adding 802.11b devices (including Squeezebox) will cause the overall performance of your network to drop. The overall network speed does NOT drop all the way to the speed of 802.11b devices, but the specific amount of that slowdown depends on the devices in your network.

 

[ianbergman]

I can pretty much promise you that 802.11G at 54Mbps is far faster than whatever bandwidth your apt. building may have, unless it's the size of a small city (even a T3 can't keep up with WirelessG)...

even if you could work out a way to multi-home your wireless cards, you wouldn't see any added benefit on the internet. Where you could see benefit is in an internal LAN either with local residents or machines within your own apartment.

Of course, those machines would have to support the same amount of bandwidth.

Better, if you're just looking for a faster way to transfer data among your own machines, is to get one of the 108Mpbs wireless solutions from D-Link or others. They're not an official spec yet, but they work, and are compatible with the G network in your building.

EDIT
This is actually kind of an interesting solution your building did. It makes me wonder what the LAN backbone in the building is, and how many access points there are. While the Wireless-G network might be fast enough for internet access right now, 54Mbps of shared bandwidth for the entire building - or even just for chunks of it - seems awfully short-sighted. One person streaming a video from their DVR to their TV could use up all that bandwidth right there. You say it's a new building - is there even Ethernet cabling installed at all?