Daft question time

My PC is situated next to the master socket, to which two phone lines
are connected. Using Win XP, all patches applied.

Is it possible for my PC to be connected to both lines at the same
time, using different ADSL services simultaneously?

I'm guessing the answer will be 'no'.

TIA.



--
Cheers,

Guy

** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
** out of someone who richly deserves it.

Dr Teeth wrote:
> My PC is situated next to the master socket, to which two phone lines
> are connected. Using Win XP, all patches applied.
>
> Is it possible for my PC to be connected to both lines at the same
> time, using different ADSL services simultaneously?
>
> I'm guessing the answer will be 'no'.
>
> TIA.

yes it can connect to both simultaneously, but without some special hardware
at both ends of the connection, you wont see any kind of speed benefit.

Gaz

On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:28:05 +0100, Dr Teeth
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>My PC is situated next to the master socket, to which two phone lines
>are connected. Using Win XP, all patches applied.
>
>Is it possible for my PC to be connected to both lines at the same
>time, using different ADSL services simultaneously?
>
>I'm guessing the answer will be 'no'.
>
>TIA.

I believe that you can get a dual WAN router that would be able to
bond the 2 connections. You would then connect your PC to that.

It wouldn't work with USB modems or anything like that.

So the answer is kinda yes.

I believe there is a 'load balancing' software available that will spread
your requests to utilize both connections.
Of course there are hardware boxes to do that too, but likely to be
expensive.
Regards,
Martin

On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:28:05 +0100, Dr Teeth
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>My PC is situated next to the master socket, to which two phone lines
>are connected. Using Win XP, all patches applied.
>
>Is it possible for my PC to be connected to both lines at the same
>time, using different ADSL services simultaneously?
>
>I'm guessing the answer will be 'no'.
>
>TIA.

Its quite possible. As has been pointed out you couldn't bond the
lines without hardware and cooperation from your ISP (Zen don't
support any form of bonding) but I don't think that is what you were
asking?

Eg you could have two ADSL lines and use one for leeching from usenet
24/7 (assuming an unmetered service) and the other for general use -
all you'd need to do is change the routing table in Windows XP to tell
it to use the relevant ADSL connection. A bit like this :

route -p add 208.49.80.124 MASK 255.255.255.0 88.96.101.198 IF 2

That adds a persistant static route via my router at 88.96.101.198
using the second network card in the machine to one of the cluster of
machines that forms news.useneteserver.com

Hope that helps?
--
John Naismith

On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:20:01 +0100, John Naismith
<john$(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


>machines that forms news.useneteserver.com

Should of course be "news.usenetserver.com"

--
John Naismith

I was just thinking how wonderful life was, when Dr Teeth
<(E-Mail Removed)> opened his gob and said:

>My PC is situated next to the master socket, to which two phone lines
>are connected. Using Win XP, all patches applied.
>
>Is it possible for my PC to be connected to both lines at the same
>time, using different ADSL services simultaneously?
>
>I'm guessing the answer will be 'no'.
>
>TIA.

Thanks to all the replies, much appreciated.

--
Cheers,

Guy

** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
** out of someone who richly deserves it.

Dave wrote:

> On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:28:05 +0100, Dr Teeth
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> >My PC is situated next to the master socket, to which two phone lines
> >are connected. Using Win XP, all patches applied.
> >
> >Is it possible for my PC to be connected to both lines at the same
> >time, using different ADSL services simultaneously?
> >
> >I'm guessing the answer will be 'no'.
> >
> >TIA.
>
> I believe that you can get a dual WAN router that would be able to
> bond the 2 connections. You would then connect your PC to that.
>
> It wouldn't work with USB modems or anything like that.
>
> So the answer is kinda yes.

But surely the only improvement you'll get (on ADSL) would be a better
contention ratio, although offset by decreased actual throughput?

"Dr Teeth" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> My PC is situated next to the master socket, to which two phone lines
> are connected. Using Win XP, all patches applied.
>
> Is it possible for my PC to be connected to both lines at the same
> time, using different ADSL services simultaneously?

Yes. You will need two ADSL routers / modems and means of connecting to
both. A lot of recent PC's have two ethernet ports as standard. Even if
they don't most ADSL modems have USB ports.

So you could have an BT connection and an AOL connection

Without exrta software at your end choice of connection will be arbitrary.

Using two connections to double your bandwidth (as in ISDN bonding) will be
messy and require things on the net side.

>
> I'm guessing the answer will be 'no'.
>
> TIA.
>
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Guy
>
> ** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
> ** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
> ** out of someone who richly deserves it.

On 3 Oct 2006, "Martin²" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I believe there is a 'load balancing' software available that will spread
>your requests to utilize both connections.

Depends whether load balancing was actually needed (not clear from original
question as to what traffic would be on each ISP, or whether simple rules
could be used to divert certain traffic onto one or other).

>Of course there are hardware boxes to do that too, but likely to be
>expensive.

Some aren't so expensive. One which has been mentioned is from Edimax but
yet to see who supplies them in the UK - to be able to get a firm price -
around 85 pounds was mentioned, I think.

Anyway, as someone else showed it is possible to use "route add" commands
to make traffic to certain IP ranges use a particular router - you could
trigger DNS lookups to go on some low quota connection (in effect tests
that connection is "up") or use one connection for specific types of
traffic such as usenet, or a range of IPs for a specific service, so
perhaps always use ISP #1 (with a fixed IP) for sending e-mail, and
ISP #2 (with dynamic IP) for general purpose use, browsing, etc.