I want to use multiple internet connections on the same pc

Running a virtual pc on my computer isn't much better than using a laptop and a pc. Although it is something I didn't think of so thanks for that at least.

And for the other thing, while its nice that you addressed my question, you didn't answer it. Your just assuming I'm a user with little to no understanding of operating systems? While I may not have any actual work experience related to networking, I'm currently attending college and I am specifically in the field of networking. I have a very good base of knowledge about this which is what got me curious in the first place.

Which leads me back to my original question. How can i configure everything to allow me to actually use two connections simultaneously and then what determines what connection is used for applications afterward.

Using a motherboard or software that combines 2 gigabit ethernet ports is about the best you can hope for, there are several issues that people don't usually understand, your average cable is 10/100 cat 5 and there's cat 5e cable that is 10/100/1000 the latter will allow a huge amount of data to pass through (10 times the capability of cat 5) your line even if you don't have a full set of 10/100/1000 hardware to go with it.

The 2nd part of the issue most people don't look at is if all your hardware, Cable modem/router is 10/100 you don't get the connection speed of the gigabit ethernet card even with a cat 5e (gigabit) cable. To truely see the differecnce you have to have complete matching hardware and cables. Yes the hardware is out there and no it's not crazy expensive but it does cost more.

Simple choice that most people don't ususally do but wil still increase your speed, Make or buy all Cat 5e cableing for your network, every single cable needs to be cat 5e.

*** Back to your question. Adding another OS to your PC so you can download from 2 different network adapters is futile. You'd add stress to your PC suck up resources and pretty much be dealing with a huge pain in the ass.

Buy a Gigabit router, Gigabit Modem and all Cat 5e cables. If you have a motherboard that allows 2 ethernet cards to be used together then you'll see one of the fatest connections that is consumer possible/cost effective.

Then again if your rich you can always go with future proofing your network and buy all Cat 6a Cabling and hardware, it's about as expensive as a decent used car but if you really can just blow money go for it.

Hope my answer helped you.

Luke

Ok. As no-one has actually answered you yet -
It can be done!

To address xxsk8er101xx:

"...because of how DHCP works and how computers receive their IP address."

DHCP problems and blahblahblah.
Just because it looks like the magical computer box is one big blob welded together, it's not.
Computers do not receive IP addresses. Devices are assigned IP addresses. This is like saying "I have toes. And I have toes on one foot. NOOOOOOO that means I can't have toes on my other foot T_T" to which the answer is "No. Toes go on feet. If you have two feet, you can have two sets of toes to go along with them."

"It's too complicated to explain it to a user with little to no understanding of operating systems."
There is no problem here. The "God moves in mysterious ways" argument will not stick to a computer.

Try it some time. Connect to the same network (because this is a more achievable task for most) with wireless and your LAN cable. Each device will (unless you turned DHCP off) almost without fail connect. And connect with different IP addresses.
zOMG. O-M-Freeking-G. Two lots of DHCP going! My brain is melting!
Because some smart person above knows better.

(As it happens, I did this about half an hour ago with two wireless network cards - one on g, one on n).

I have had, for instance, a laptop running through I think it was 2 connections simultaneously, whilst being a bridge to give a router an internet connection and thereby the PC (didn't have a wireless card for the PC at the time, so I was using the laptop as an OTT wireless card ;D)

"Ok well if you are in college learning the trade I would suggest you research this particular homework assignment."
Well done for the witty retort. So... you flat out state "This cannot work" with one hand (and by the way, your solution indicates no understanding of the problem. A virtual PC would not have bypassed your imaginary problem. It would still have had to run the connections via the top level operating system, and if there were such a problem, it would run into it at the same point) then say it's a homework assignment? That's implying that it can be done as no teacher of a subject unless they're incredibly sadistic would set an impossible task like that).



Point is!

If you want the easier method - set one process to use one, and a second to use the other (IP configurations etc. blahblah you ought to know how to do this by now. Just select the right IP address etc. and bob's your uncle. Run it through proxies to make it a little easier.)

But that's not what you want.

I forget the specifics now, but you should be able to set each socket / port to connect through via the IP address you want, and thus so long as you have a different process connecting each file - you should be able to connect through two different connections.

One thing you can't really do though, is send one request for a file, and have it come back in parallel down the two lines unless you request for each half separately, or get it in segments.

I'm not sure about other applications to do it, but up there's the how to code it - use your language of choice, and look the details up, shouldn't be too difficult ~30 - 100 lines in Java including an interface to select which device and to input URLs.

Hello,

My question is along the same train of thought as what's being discussed in this thread. I, too, would like to be able to use two (or more) internet connections and/or two connections on each PC on my local network, but not for the reasons and goals discussed above.

Environment

LAN

Maximum of 5 PC's and 2 laptops as well as 1 Mac and 1 iPad. They are not usually all on the network all at the same time. The iPad, Mac, 1 laptop and 1 PC only occasionally are on the network. 3 PC's are connected almost non-stop 24/7, and one more PC and the other laptop are connected 8 - 5. So, the LAN is busier than a typical home user's network, but perhaps not quite to the level of a corporate network environment.

ISP Connections

1 2.5 Mb DSL connection from PLDT, an ISP that is perhaps the world's worst when it comes to ISP customer service or support. The connection comes into a really cheap Chinese piece-of-crap ZyXEL modem, and then out to a Linksys E4200 Router, which is currently serving as the DHCP server for the LAN. Currently, this connection is "intermittent" as seen in the two images I've provided below. In a typical day using PLDT's currently unstable and unreliable connection, I have to reset the modem between 20 and 40 times per day, and usually several times per hour (no, I'm not kidding or exaggerating). Actually, I had to reset my modem eight times while typing this post. Here are some examples of typical ping tests for this connection, one from today while writing this post:

This often happens when I click on links (two clicks shown here... you can tell where they are)



PLDT's Idea Of A Stable Connection



1 3.0 Mb DSL connection from Globe, which comes in and connects to a Prolink H5001N combination modem and router (provided by Globe). It is has wireless capability (which I have not tested yet) and one local port, and has DHCP capacity as well, although I am not sure yet how many computers it can accommodate. This is a new connection, only recently offered in my subdivision. I'm currently testing it's stability. So far, it has crapped out on me twice for no more than 5 minutes each time.

Depending on the advice I get from the gurus on this forum about what I am about to describe below, I could use either one of these devices (the Prolink or the Linksys) as the DHCP (I would imagine that between those two, you ALL would agree that the Linksys is a "beefier" device for that purpose). However, I could also come out of either one of these devices and go into a Windows XP Pro SP3 PC before going out to the network, and have that PC serve as the DHCP server (I believe XP and even the old faithful Windows 2000 Pro has that capability by default). If I'm not mistaken, doing so would also give me the added benefit of additional security with Windows Firewall in place.

Goals

1. Possibly (Hopefully), I'd like to have my entire network to have a more stable and reliable internet access using both connections simultaneously, but not to increase download speed, or to access a file on a source computer from two connections simultaneously, such as what is described above. I'm simply looking for the entire network to enjoy the redundancy of having more than one connection without having to go change out the connections every time an ISP craps out on me.

2. On the Mac and each client PC on the LAN, I'd like to have two NIC's. One would access the internet and not the network, the other would access the network and not the internet. If this is possible, the primary benefit I'm looking for is for the local file-sharing bandwidth to not interfere with internet bandwidth (and vice-versa, I suppose). A secondary benefit (but certainly an important one, if possible) would be the possibility of increased security of my files from being seen on the internet as a result of the internet connection not having access to the network. In this scenario, only the desktops would be set up in this way. With my laptops, I could probably have the wireless connection access the internet, and the wired connection access the network. I'm not worried about the iPad being able to do this at all,

Possibilities

First, I'm pretty sure that my desire to have two NIC's in a PC, Mac or Windows laptop doing two different things are entirely possible. I've had this discussion before (although I don't remember with whom I had it), and that person confirmed this to be the case, and even acted like it was easy to do. I just didn't get around to asking him HOW to do it. I am by no means an expert programmer, but I can manage a few registry changes, setting properties in Network Connections, some command line functions, etc. if someone here can tell me how to do this.

Next, is the whole issue of having the network enjoy both connections simultaneously.

From what I have read in this thread, I think the following might be the best way to do this, but I'd like you gurus here to confirm this for me.

Based on what I read here, it sounds like the best way to make this happen would be to have both internet connections connect to one PC (which, in my case, would be running either Windows 2000 Pro (if that's all that's needed) or Windows XP Pro SP3, configured the way you tell me to configure it here in this thread). This machine would have to be running some kind of software that allowed multiple connections simultaneously and managed them, using them equally for the machines behind this one. From there, I could either...

- Configure this same machine to be the DHCP server, allowing it to assign IP addresses to each machine on my network. In this scenario, I'd have to have a 3rd NIC, come out of that NIC to a HUB, and from there connect to each machine. This method would eliminate the need for the Linksys router.

OR....

- Also with a 3rd NIC, come out of this PC to the Linksys router, and let the Linksys act as the DHCP server.

**************************************************

So? Does any of this sound right, or am I totally off-base? If I'm right, please tell me which option is right, and more importantly, how to....

a) Configure the machine responsible for load-balancing to make this happen. Which software mentioned in this thread is the best one to use for this? What EXACT procedures, programming, etc. is involved for configuring each NIC on this machine?

b) Which of the two options I described above is best for coming out of the load-balancing PC? Is it best to use the Linksys, or bypass it?

c) What EXACT programming would be required on the client machines to cause one NIC to access the internet and not the network, and the other to access only the network and not the internet? Also, would this have the side-effect of somehow further protecting my LAN's files from the internet? If so, how?

I've seen enough from this thread and other threads on this forum to know that many of you have the training, expertise and experience to properly and completely answer this question - certainly more than anyone I've found in my area. However, as in-depth as my explanation of my problem and goals are in this post, I'm certain that the answer will require some time on your part. This being the case, I'd like to recognize to be the case, and thank you in advance for taking the time to read this, and to answer it, not only for my benefit, but for the benefit of all. Not only have I not been able to find the answer to this question elsewhere on this forum, but I haven't found it anywhere else on the internet, so you will be doing a lot of people a great service by doing so!

you cannot achieve this without adding any extra equipment.i might suggest buying a load balancing router.with this,your computer does not choose which of your connection it will download the file/s you want to download but the router itself.
try reading the link below.i hope this helps or atleast gives you an idea.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk [...] 4820.shtml

same problem here...

what i have: 2 wired dlink router, 1 dlink ethernet switch hub, onboard lan, and add-on pci lan card

what i want to do:
connect dsl to router1; connect cable internet to router2, use switch hub for bridge... connect 1 lan cable to onboard lan and another on add on pci lan card...

so question is can i run both internet in one pc??? (switch hub if for my network i like to run those internet connections to my 10 pc)

is that possible that the dsl will work for gamings and the cableinternet for web browsing,downloading,updates,video streaming etc???

is that possible?? because web browsing,downloading,updates,video streaming etc affects the latency or ping of the online games, that's why i want to have a seperate internet connection for online gaming..

Not sure if this will work, but in windows 7 there is an option for sharing network access with another computer. If you have 2 computers each with two NICs then it might just work.

Example Scenario

One laptop with wireless and wired connections (computer A). One desktop computer with two wired (computer B). Both adapters on the computer (B) must support ANS teaming. Computer B is wired into computer A and a wired connection to your router. Computer A wired to computer B and wirelessly connected to a different router. On computer A set up the wired connection to 'share bandwidth' with computer B. On computer B set both NICs as an ANS Team.

I have no idea if this will work in actuality, but theoretically....

On the other hand if you are just trying to get load balancing, take a closer look at the ANS Teaming from intel.

Also it is possible to be connected to two networks on one computer without intermediary devices, but (to my knowledge) only as a server that is doing some internal routing.