Anyone have experience bridging network connections?

[Reverend Maynard]

Howdy all. In a week or so I will have both a cable connection, and a dsl connection. I was wondering if it was possible/probable for me to bridge both connections on my main rig.

Now beyond whether this is possible or not, would it realistically do me any good? The upload is horribly gimped on both connections, locked at 128k/sec. Would bridging connections give me a 256k upload speed to say a single user, or would it just pick one of the connections and use it to upload?

I am running Win2k now, but I can switch to any windows os in order to get this working. I have Win2k advanced server and WinXP readily available, if one of those is better.

Thanks for your help all.

[MultimediaMan]

What you want is called Bonding, or Port Aggregation and I'm pretty sure you cannot do it without using the very same Router on the ISP side.

That said, it is possible to use multiple cable modems and bond a NICs with each, but again, the ISP router would have accept that sort of a concurrent connection (I've done port aggregation on a couple of LANs, never over a WAN). Also, your hardware has to support bonding or port aggregation. Currently, your choices are Intel Pro 100+ NICs or Adaptec 620xx adapters (Single, Dual or Four port NICs).

There are others made by Netgear, but they are not compatible with Win2K/WinXP.

Win2K or WinXP would be required.

[Reverend Maynard]

well that certainly is a bummer. I was hoping to get some use out of the multiple connections.

[mallowman]

Although I don't know any of the details of setting up this sort of thing on Windows. You may be able to set up masquerading so that it alternates which physical connection each outgoing request takes. It isn't quite ideal, but it's better than nothing.

[mattsteg]

You could get a dual port NIC with load balancing capabilities I think. Also, you could try this router if you aren't opposed to spending some money. http://www.hardware-one.com/reviews.asp?aid=248&page=1

[Duty]

Originally posted by mattsteg
You could get a dual port NIC with load balancing capabilities I think. Also, you could try this router if you aren't opposed to spending some money. http://www.hardware-one.com/reviews.asp?aid=248&page=1

That is one cool chunk of netwok love there...


Jeff

[MultimediaMan]

Oh yeah, that router is suhweet, but it doesn't do summing, just failover/loadbalancing. But the net effect of such a rig is akin to having a full duplex connection, which is very cool.

On the Bridging front, check here...

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&postid=257623#post257623

[ChenSoft]

What you'r looking for called FatPipe

FatPipe Is a litle program that takes all sort of internet conections & combine them 2 create a broadband connection.
I used it with 2 56k modems a year ago.
was quite buggie but worked.
not quite shure if thats what U were looking 4.

Chen

[Colin Morey]

if your cable and DSL are from the same provider they _may_ allow you to bond them, (unlikely as bonding across different NAS/termination units is a pain). however you may find multipath routing will suit you better, there are some consumer routers that will handle it very nicely.

It's worth noting that bridging is something out entirely, and not what you want (your providers may get upset if you bridge them together )