Dual WAN on single computer?

**The_Silent_One_1** · May 24th, 2005, 05:14 PM

I know that you can buy dual WAN Router's. Is it possible to use 2 or more WAN's with a single Windows XP Pro or 2003 Server Machine?

**confus-ed** · May 25th, 2005, 02:45 PM

I dunno what you are getting at really

.. but if you had two NIC's in a machine you could indeed connect to two seperate networks, which might well be wans, so yes for any o/s...

**The_Silent_One_1** · May 25th, 2005, 04:08 PM

Point taken, I'm more wondering if they can be combined or setup so that one uploads and the other downloads or that type of thing.

**confus-ed** · May 26th, 2005, 03:43 AM

If you've got something to control all the ins & outs there's no reason why you can't have lots of NIC's all doing different functions whether they be in or out .. its what zillions of servers around the planet are doing all day long !

You need to understand concepts like " multi-link trunking" (where multiple NIC connections are made to the same point and traffic is spread across all links) & IP multipathing (which Sun explain as "If a failure occurs in the network adaptor, and if you have an alternate adaptor connected to the same IP link, the system switches all the network accesses automatically from the failed adaptor to the alternate adaptor. This process ensures uninterrupted access to the network. Also, when you have multiple network adaptors connected to the same IP link, you achieve increased traffic throughput by spreading the traffic across multiple network adaptors") - of course you can get 'most of the benefits' (no redundancy in connection though) by simply using faster links (most of the above techniques are for use in environments where you can't necessarily just expand all the pipes, like being an ISP)...

I'm still puzzled what you are up to though !

- do you want to know for 'in practice' or just 'in theory' ?

**The_Silent_One_1** · May 26th, 2005, 09:06 AM

What I'm up to is that I recently got an ADSL line to complement my cable line. My cable line occasionally has outages and so I got an ADSL line for some redundancy. I was planning on getting a dual-WAN router, but then decided that I couldn't justify/couldn't afford it. My main computer has DUAL LAN and so Iw as wondering if I could set it up just for it.

**confus-ed** · May 26th, 2005, 09:27 AM

Right ho .. just stick two nic's in !

(the only vaguely tricky bit, I suppose is making sure you've got two non-conflicting NICs set up correctly)

Then as far as windoze is concerned you've just got two connections & choose the one you want, or even have both open at once .. but if you want to combine the speeds, then that's multiplexing & you need compliant ISPs & such & generally its not practical at home..

**nekur0** · May 26th, 2005, 09:32 AM

Yes, you would just plug in the second connection to your other network card and set up the connection per your ISP instructions. If one connection is faster than the other you can set the metric for the network controller to decide which network card has priority.

Just open the network connection and select TCP/IP click the advanced button and set the interface metric. Lower number have the highest priority.