Can you use 2 ISPs at once?

Soldato
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Just had my cable AOL installed but not connected it to the pc yet as ive still got bulldog until end of the month.

As the AOL is cable and the bulldog is ADSL can i use both connections together?
 
Associate
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Not sure how effective this is but if you've got two network cards you should be able to plug both modems in and set the connactions up, then in network connection right-click on one of the connections and choose Bridge Connections (or something similar to that.

Don't know about outside of XP and I've never actually tried it but it's feasible.
 
Soldato
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litrelord said:
Not sure how effective this is but if you've got two network cards you should be able to plug both modems in and set the connactions up, then in network connection right-click on one of the connections and choose Bridge Connections (or something similar to that.

Don't know about outside of XP and I've never actually tried it but it's feasible.

I think you may be thinking of multilink? That won't work unless the ISP supports it.

Only thing you could really do is have two default gateways on your router and load-balance between the two. This will be per-path so you will only get the speed of one link but two sessions could each use a different path so (Assuming they are both 2mbit) you could have 2x2mbit connections.

If you don't have one router that connects them both, you could simply point the default gateways on your PC's to diff routers.
 
Soldato
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2 connections to 2 different ISPs will not work with home networking equipment, you need to run BGP in order to use both lines, because you need to tell the rest of the internet that there are 2 paths to your network <1 through AOL and 1 through Bulldog> you can get a software based app, which will take both lines and session load balance over the 2, meaning 1 download will be dedicated to 1 connection and the other download will go down the other connection, but you'll never get 4Mbit throughput for any single connection.
 
Soldato
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sja360 said:
true but it cant really be classed as cable or adsl then :confused:

NTL did a Merge with AOL which allows AOL to use NTL's cable infrastructure to provide broadband, what the difference is I don't know, I guess that it'll just be cable but instead you'll have that rubbish AOL browser and loads of utilities which make your cpu run at 99% :D
 
Soldato
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V-Spec said:
NTL did a Merge with AOL which allows AOL to use NTL's cable infrastructure to provide broadband, what the difference is I don't know, I guess that it'll just be cable but instead you'll have that rubbish AOL browser and loads of utilities which make your cpu run at 99% :D

So cant i use IE?
 
Soldato
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There is no need to run BGP as static\default routing is in operation across both access links on these resedential services and you don't have a public IP address space that you are trying to support on both ISPs, rather you will use two distinct \32 addresses one for each provider. It doesn't matter what the access technology is, and that they differ.

Assuming you are not running an IGP within your domain, as people have suggested a single device load-balancing across both access links would work. Typically most consumer routers don't support this so you'll need something more substantial or a dedicated PC with multiple interfaces for your routing.

You will not see asymetric routing, nor should this be a particular problem due to the proximity of your CE devices.

Skidd.
 
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