An almost "unique" networking problem
 

Greetings one and all.

I am in the lucky position of having 2 fully working (still) cable modems. Don't ask. I dunno why they both work either! Both provide internet access (one is 10Mbit down, 512Kbit up, the other is 2Mbit down, 200Kbit up), and both together should give me a theoretical 12Mbit downstream, 712Kbit upstream. I say *should*, because in reality, I can only use either one or the other.

I'd like to be able to use both at the same time, as this would help enormously when using BitTorrent, especially with the upload. However, I cannot figure out how! Currently, I have the 2Mbit service connected to a router which is providing a hardware firewall and is connected to my laptop via the ethernet LAN port. The 10Mbit service is connected to a Belkin F5D9230-4 wireless router, and is connected to my laptop via the onboard wireless card.

I have tried many ways of joining the 2 connections together, including using XP's software bridging, and but nothing appears to have worked. I am eager to get it working more as a technical exercise than anything else, regardless of the benefits it could bring. I have a Netgear WGR614v9 router kindly provided by Virgin Media when I signed up that is sitting idly by and waiting to be used if it is required!

Any help in this matter is appreciated!

Regards,

Turkey Machine

Re: An almost "unique" networking problem
 

Are you paying for both modems? If not, then I suppose it's not exactly correct to be on here advising you on how to make the best of it!

If you are, then you need a "bridging" router. I use that term because, frankly, I've made it up and I can't remember the real one.

Ideally it'd be a Cisco bit of it, but other companies do make much cheaper kit that will do load balancing across two connections and offer redundancy.

I can't really find a whole lot out there on Google - but that's what you need: a load balancing router. :)

Re: An almost "unique" networking problem
 

Technical exercise, remember? ;)

Do none of the commercial wireless routers offer the bridging capability then?

Re: An almost "unique" networking problem
 

Nah, they don't seem to - a couple of sites I had a look at through Google (I think I just typed "load balancing router") seemed to have discontinued the models they did.

I'm sure Netgear did one though, but it might not be particularly cheap.

Re: An almost "unique" networking problem