Connecting to Internet thru two ISPs

[churin]

My PC can be connected to the Internet through two ISPs. One connection is done by wiring to a router and another done wirelessly to another router. I wonder if the two connections done as above can be effectively utilized. Could anyone shed light on this?

 

[DC187]

In what way do you want to utilize them?

Windows will only direct traffic out to one default gateway. If you were to manually configure your network connections with different default gateways you get a warning dialog, unfortunately you don't receive this warning when your addresses are assigned by DHCP.

However if you want traffic destined to specific networks you could create some static routes in Windows to direct traffic over a specific gateway.

Hope this helps

 

[churin]

In what way do you want to utilize them?

Windows will only direct traffic out to one default gateway. If you were to manually configure your network connections with different default gateways you get a warning dialog, unfortunately you don't receive this warning when your addresses are assigned by DHCP.

The IP for the network via the wired router is assigned statically and another IP is assigned by the wireless router. I was wondering if the Windows utilizes the combined bandwidth even for one specific traffic, or one traffic through one router and another through another router. But you say the Windows is not that smart.

However if you want traffic destined to specific networks you could create some static routes in Windows to direct traffic over a specific gateway.

How can this be done? Could you point to any reference?

 

[DC187]

That's right Windows isn't smart enough.

You're looking to "team" your two internet connections, which is possible but you must meet the following requirements:
A router/firewall supporting two connection and able to "team" them
Both connections would need to be with the same ISP, and said ISP would have to support teaming their end.

An alternative is use one connection for resilience, usually the slower of the two, the requirements for this would simply be a router supporting failover internet connections, such a router would be a Draytek Vigor 2820. This way if your primary connection drops you'll automatically switch to the other connection and switch back again when the primary connection reconnects.

However if you want traffic destined to specific networks you could create some static routes in Windows to direct traffic over a specific gateway.

How can this be done? Could you point to any reference?

You can do this by using the route add command:
Open a cmd window and enter the following commands:

View existing routes:
route print

Add a new route:
route ADD x.x.x.x MASK x.x.x.x x.x.x.x METRIC 1

Where the first set of x.x.x.x is the destination network, the second group is the netmask and the third group is the gateway address this traffic will travel via

To make a route persistent across reboots add -p after the route command but before ADD

Use route -? for command help and usage.

I hope this helps in someway.