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Best way to deal with 2 (home) internet connections

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  • Jul 19th, 2013 5:47 pm
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Deal Addict
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May 16, 2007
1584 posts
77 upvotes

Best way to deal with 2 (home) internet connections

Hey Guys,

I'll be moving soon and the new place I'm moving to has free Rogers internet for 1 year. My work also pays for an internet connection and I've been having issues lately with Teksavvy Cable (i've been down for a few days at a time in some instances). What I wanted to do was set up a second internet connection (redundancy as well as once my Rogers freebie is up I'll still have internet). What is the best way to do this?

I was thinking of going with a DSL provider, assuming my new area is DSL capable. I know there are special load balancing routers that have dual WAN ports, but I don't need this level of sophistication, but if the cost isn't prohibitive, it would be cool.

Can anyone provide any insight?

Thanks!
11 replies
Deal Addict
Jul 16, 2005
1438 posts
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Why get all complicated? Manually disconnect 1 unless your primary goes down, then you manually switch over. Chances are it won't go down within that month.
Deal Addict
Jun 8, 2005
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Toronto
There are many more advanced routers that support multiple WAN connections (e.g. Zyxel, Mikrotik, etc) that you can get. If it were me, I'd do it with an old PC and run pfSense. Just plop in 3 NIC's (1 for WAN1, 1 for WAN2, 1 for LAN) and you can configure pfSense to load balance or failover or what have you depending on your preferences. Your cost for a dual WAN router are probably $200-$300ish. Repurposing an old PC (e.g. P4 or newer) to do this can be much cheaper.
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May 16, 2007
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0xffff wrote: There are many more advanced routers that support multiple WAN connections (e.g. Zyxel, Mikrotik, etc) that you can get. If it were me, I'd do it with an old PC and run pfSense. Just plop in 3 NIC's (1 for WAN1, 1 for WAN2, 1 for LAN) and you can configure pfSense to load balance or failover or what have you depending on your preferences. Your cost for a dual WAN router are probably $200-$300ish. Repurposing an old PC (e.g. P4 or newer) to do this can be much cheaper.
Thanks, this makes the most sense - can I use the PC as a file server or does it have to be a dedicated router box?

EDIT: I just checked out the pfSense website; it seems to be a little more involved than what I had anticipated. Is there something simpler for laymen?
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Oct 13, 2002
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shopper_of_things wrote: Why get all complicated? Manually disconnect 1 unless your primary goes down, then you manually switch over. Chances are it won't go down within that month.
For only short term (1 year), I prefer this too.

Alternatively, you could dedicate 1 connection for work only (assuming you need to work from home) and the other for home use.
Sr. Member
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Oct 24, 2003
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years ago (6-7 maybe) i used to have rogers cable and bell dsl going into the same computer. i think one was wired lan and the other was a wireless. depending which one i wanted to use, i would just go to network connections and disable the other adapter that i didnt wanna use. or for the wireless one, just unplugged the usb card.

if both were wired, it would work the same. you'd have to get a secondary network card, so u can plug them both in. and just disable the one u didnt want to use.
Deal Fanatic
Jul 26, 2007
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Toronto
Is there a way to bridge the 2 internet connection to get X + X speed?
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Aug 22, 2006
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0xffff wrote: There are many more advanced routers that support multiple WAN connections (e.g. Zyxel, Mikrotik, etc) that you can get. If it were me, I'd do it with an old PC and run pfSense. Just plop in 3 NIC's (1 for WAN1, 1 for WAN2, 1 for LAN) and you can configure pfSense to load balance or failover or what have you depending on your preferences. Your cost for a dual WAN router are probably $200-$300ish. Repurposing an old PC (e.g. P4 or newer) to do this can be much cheaper.
+1 pfSense. It was handling 4 WANs for me for a while.
Starkicker wrote: Thanks, this makes the most sense - can I use the PC as a file server or does it have to be a dedicated router box?

EDIT: I just checked out the pfSense website; it seems to be a little more involved than what I had anticipated. Is there something simpler for laymen?
If you want you could virtualize pfSense on top of a file server.
There are simpler things for a layman (although not really since it does take a bit of knowhow in order to configure) but they're not cheap.
I ran an RV016 which as a little brother RV042, but it's $150. And the RV016 was crap. pfSense murders it. I don't recommend the RV042 in the slightest.
I haven't used dual WANs on a Mikrotik yet, but that's not exactly simple either.
peteryorkuca wrote: Is there a way to bridge the 2 internet connection to get X + X speed?
In short: No. The upstream has to support it.
That said, some applications that open up multiple streams (think "large water") can utilize multiple connections easily.
But stuff like web browsing breaks horribly. As do other things that rely on a single IP.
Deal Addict
Jun 8, 2005
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peteryorkuca wrote: Is there a way to bridge the 2 internet connection to get X + X speed?
As death_hawk said, you cannot add two connections together for a faster speed. However, you can bridge them to add more bandwidth. For example, if you had 2x10mbit/s connection, you would not have a 20mbit/s connection. You would however, have a connection that can support twice as much data at 10mbit/s (e.g. the size of your pipe does not change, the speed at which water flows throguh your pipe does not change, but you have two pipes so you can flow twice as much water at the same time, it just doesn't move any faster).
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Dec 22, 2006
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Akitakara wrote: Here's a program called "Connectify Dispatch" to join the bandwidth together:

http://www.connectify.me/dispatch/


Never actually tried it myself though.
Dispatch is a client side load balancer. It does not and can not bond two internet connections for X+Y=Z speeds.
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Jul 15, 2006
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0xffff wrote: There are many more advanced routers that support multiple WAN connections (e.g. Zyxel, Mikrotik, etc) that you can get. If it were me, I'd do it with an old PC and run pfSense. Just plop in 3 NIC's (1 for WAN1, 1 for WAN2, 1 for LAN) and you can configure pfSense to load balance or failover or what have you depending on your preferences. Your cost for a dual WAN router are probably $200-$300ish. Repurposing an old PC (e.g. P4 or newer) to do this can be much cheaper.
Thanks for your post. I am going to look into pfSense and see how it can complement my setup. I have so many old computers and NIC lying around. I think I can hookup an asus E35 M1-M Pro mobo/cpu setup which has very low power requirements and have 2 wan's in for internet failover support, and output it to a switch to the rest of my gear.

all the best.

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