Two broadband feeds

Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much trouble any one ISP
being able to give a reliable and sustainable service, would it be possible
to have two broadband feeds to the same computer?

I was thinking along the lines of having a feed via both BT and NTL to
separate ISPs. The additional cost of £13.99 a month would give redundancy
which, in some circumstances, may be well worth it. A cheaper option would
be to have a dial-up connection to a free (other than a 0845 call charge)
ISP.

Other than one modem and one ISP would obviously have to be the default with
the other on standby I don't see any other technical issues?

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions

On 20 Nov 2006, "Bill Ridgeway" wrote:

>Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much trouble any one ISP
>being able to give a reliable and sustainable service, would it be possible
>to have two broadband feeds to the same computer?

Yes, quite easily. Apart from having 2 routers (one for each service) and
manually setting which you use as primary and secondary, there are various
ways to handle the connections, from having them both on the LAN with some
(MD-DOS) "route" or TCP/IP settings to set the priority of the two routers
or you can use DIY Linux/Unix solutions to have a machine to share load or
make one your prime connection, or use an off-the-shelf unit, such as from
Edimax where multiple WAN connections are used and your PC traffic goes to
the Edimax... up to something more costly like the Firebrick (around 500)

>Other than one modem and one ISP would obviously have to be the default with
>the other on standby I don't see any other technical issues?

S*d's law suggests the secondary could go down and you might not know until
you _really_ need it. I've used 'route add' commands to cause some traffic
to go over a link with one ISP (on fixed IP) while browsing on a second ISP
(with dynamic IP). That way I know if the fixed IP goes down (DNS lookups
would be quickly noticed if they failed), while browsing gets logged on the
remote web servers, but as it is a dynamic IP, I'm pretty 'anonymous' :-)

"Bill Ridgeway" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:ejsdvj$5gv$(E-Mail Removed)
> Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much
> trouble any one ISP being able to give a reliable and
> sustainable service, would it be possible to have two
> broadband feeds to the same computer?

Not at the same time, unless you are willing to invest in specialist
equipment to combine the two feeds. Which unless you're a business who
relies on the connection to trade, is probably not financially viable.

Ivor

On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:27:14 -0000, [Bill Ridgeway] said :-

>Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much trouble any one ISP
>being able to give a reliable and sustainable service, would it be possible
>to have two broadband feeds to the same computer?
>
>I was thinking along the lines of having a feed via both BT and NTL to
>separate ISPs. The additional cost of £13.99 a month would give redundancy
>which, in some circumstances, may be well worth it. A cheaper option would
>be to have a dial-up connection to a free (other than a 0845 call charge)
>ISP.
>
>Other than one modem and one ISP would obviously have to be the default with
>the other on standby I don't see any other technical issues?
>
>Regards.
>
>Bill Ridgeway
>Computer Solutions
>

What exactly do you mean ? Are you inferring that you want two
different services down the 'same' phone line ?

"Spin Dryer" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:27:14 -0000, [Bill Ridgeway] said :-
>
>>Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much trouble any one ISP
>>being able to give a reliable and sustainable service, would it be
>>possible
>>to have two broadband feeds to the same computer?
>>
>>I was thinking along the lines of having a feed via both BT and NTL to
>>separate ISPs. The additional cost of £13.99 a month would give redundancy
>>which, in some circumstances, may be well worth it. A cheaper option
>>would
>>be to have a dial-up connection to a free (other than a 0845 call charge)
>>ISP.
>>
>>Other than one modem and one ISP would obviously have to be the default
>>with
>>the other on standby I don't see any other technical issues?
>>
>>Regards.
>>
>>Bill Ridgeway
>>Computer Solutions
>>
>
> What exactly do you mean ? Are you inferring that you want two
> different services down the 'same' phone line ?

No! One via BT and one via NTL.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions
>
>

Bill Ridgeway wrote:
> Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much trouble any one ISP
> being able to give a reliable and sustainable service, would it be possible
> to have two broadband feeds to the same computer?
>
> I was thinking along the lines of having a feed via both BT and NTL to
> separate ISPs. The additional cost of £13.99 a month would give redundancy
> which, in some circumstances, may be well worth it. A cheaper option would
> be to have a dial-up connection to a free (other than a 0845 call charge)
> ISP.
>
> Other than one modem and one ISP would obviously have to be the default with
> the other on standby I don't see any other technical issues?

Should be fine - something like the Draytek Vigor 3300 is what you could
use to connect them both simultaneously.

"Ivor Jones" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Bill Ridgeway" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:ejsdvj$5gv$(E-Mail Removed)
>> Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much
>> trouble any one ISP being able to give a reliable and
>> sustainable service, would it be possible to have two
>> broadband feeds to the same computer?
>
> Not at the same time, unless you are willing to invest in specialist
> equipment to combine the two feeds. Which unless you're a business who
> relies on the connection to trade, is probably not financially viable.
>
> Ivor
>
>

Not quite the case, Ivor.
Use a dual or triple WAN router and have 3 different setups.
In the O/Ps case he could have WAN 1 to his ADSL and WAN2 to his cable
modem.

Alastair

On 20 Nov 2006, "Ivor Jones" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Not at the same time, unless you are willing to invest in specialist
>equipment to combine the two feeds. Which unless you're a business who
>relies on the connection to trade, is probably not financially viable.

Note that in this case, the OP was not suggesting use of two connections
to be "combined" but as a primary and backup, which is really, really,
very easy. Set the router for cable to something (aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd)

Set the ADSL router to the same IP (aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd) but don't have it
plugged into the LAN while the cable router is also connected (or there
will be problems :-) Now, if connection #1 is down, switch that router
off and plug the other one in, and connection #2 will work.

Worth getting some independent mail (and perhaps even Usenet) service so
that connection can be made from ISP #1 or #2 without changes to SMTP or
any other server names (eg using www.fastmail.net for a once-only fee of
about a tenner would allow an independent POP/IMAP/SMTP mail service).

When it comes to combining the two connections for higher speed that the
costs or complexity (or maybe only the problems!) go up, not for what the
OP seems to be after.

Finally, if the two routers have different IP addresses, it's easy enough
to have traffic going on both of them, by defining specific gateways that
must be used to handle traffic for some remote address range. For example
I have had all traffic to parts of the BBC (212.58.x.x) going via one link
and the bulk of traffic going via the other. One of my clients has some of
the PCs using one of their two ADSL connections, while the mail server and
a smaller number of the office PCs uses the second, all on the same LAN,
with no extra kit (as traffic for them is only ever going through one
of the two routers).

Ivor Jones wrote:
> "Bill Ridgeway" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:ejsdvj$5gv$(E-Mail Removed)
>> Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much
>> trouble any one ISP being able to give a reliable and
>> sustainable service, would it be possible to have two
>> broadband feeds to the same computer?
>
> Not at the same time, unless you are willing to invest in specialist
> equipment to combine the two feeds. Which unless you're a business who
> relies on the connection to trade, is probably not financially viable.
>
It's relatively easy - I have an old Pentium box running Linux with
three ethernet cards in it. It happily shares both internet feeds - an
individual connection can only use one feed but if you're doing several
things then it will route different connections out on different links.
It also falls back to using one fairly transparently if the other one
dies, that's how mine is currently running with a broken NTL feed. My
local news server emails me regularly because it can't connect to the
NTL news server which is often the first warning I have that something's
not well.

--
Dave
mail da (E-Mail Removed) (without the space)
http://www.llondel.org
So many gadgets, so little time

"Richard Oliver" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Bill Ridgeway wrote:
>> Just a thought, given that there seems to be so much trouble any one ISP
>> being able to give a reliable and sustainable service, would it be
>> possible to have two broadband feeds to the same computer?
>>
>> I was thinking along the lines of having a feed via both BT and NTL to
>> separate ISPs. The additional cost of £13.99 a month would give
>> redundancy which, in some circumstances, may be well worth it. A cheaper
>> option would be to have a dial-up connection to a free (other than a 0845
>> call charge) ISP.
>>
>> Other than one modem and one ISP would obviously have to be the default
>> with the other on standby I don't see any other technical issues?
>
> Should be fine - something like the Draytek Vigor 3300 is what you could
> use to connect them both simultaneously.

The Draytek 3300 was certainly the one I had in mind when I made my post
above, Richard

Alastair