does anyone know how to do this? I know how in theory, but have yet to test it, has anyone actually done it? how was it? did it work as expected? etc...

:)

If you mean making 2 or more network connections into one link, iv been looking into it and could not find a way to do it. The only thing that did that were some server NIC's. Would be great to find one :thumbsup:

Erm, Squid? (http://www.squid-cache.org/)

Have checked with my boss, he apparently used to use squid to use 2 dial-up connections together (oh the power!) so you should be good...

Erm, Squid? (http://www.squid-cache.org/)

Have checked with my boss, he apparently used to use squid to use 2 dial-up connections together (oh the power!) so you should be good...

yeah, thats what I was thinking, some form of proxy software.

By bridging are you referring to connecting two remote sites permanently, or bonding two separate internet connections at one site to obtain a faster internet connection?

What type of internet connection analogue dial-up, ISDN, *DSL or cable?

I would like to know about bonding please :) Iv seen some guides for linux, do these relay on the hardware supporting the function or can you do it with any link (wifi for example)?

Not tried wifi, in theory it should work but you would need more than one wifi adaptor, not really practical in a laptop, for a desktop machine if you need more bandwidth than wifi can provide a cable network would be the answer.

Channel bonding is traditionally used where bandwidth is limited, one or more feeds are connected to give additional bandwidth.

It sounds more like you want to know about bonding (trunking) than bridging. Bridges are for connecting network segments of different media types where as trunking is effectively aggregating bandwidth from multiple connections in to one.

Let us know what you are wanting to do, what kit you have etc. and go from there.

it might depend on exactly what you want to do and how much time you have to spend setting things up but you might want to have a look at buying a load balancing router. Something like this http://www.thinkbroadband.com/hardware/reviews/2003/q2/neteyes_cyclone200.html

The review is a bit old now but it gives you the idea

Bit expensive though for home use though, if you have a spare box laying around you can do it cheaper and it will give you something with more control over it.

By bridging are you referring to connecting two remote sites permanently, or bonding two separate internet connections at one site to obtain a faster internet connection?

What type of internet connection analogue dial-up, ISDN, *DSL or cable?

binding 2 internet connections into one, I have looked at a program called WinGate, and that looks hopeful, I will have to wait till I get my second connection to experiment though.

I have also been thinking about a hardware solution, some dual WAN firewall/router type thing, they probably exist, but I don't know of any, or any prices.

I would ideally like to avoid setting up a little linux box or such like, due to electricity bills and noise, but the 2 connections will only be used on one machine, (one connection shared to LAN via a router, and another connection to the one machine only) - im guessing for this though, I would need a second NIC, I dont know to be honest.

I'd have a look at RouterOS from Mikrotik. It's Linux based but has an easier to use front end - you can use the custom shell or there's even a Windows GUI for it (runs happily under Wine as well). It's a powerful and cheap bit of software capable of doing much more than just bonding a couple of interfaces. Various licence levels allow different feature sets etc. Starts at free for a 1 user, cut down licence.

Also they do offer embedded versions that are available from UK resellers so you can avoid the noise problem and possibly get rid of your other router.

http://www.mikrotik.com/software.html - there's a demo router you can log in to as well
http://linitx.com/search.php?keywords=routerboard&Submit=Search

...... I've just realised I sound like a salesman for them, oops.

binding 2 internet connections into one

What sort of internet connection? DSL?

What you're talking about is either link aggregation (bonding) or load balancing. They are two different ways of doing the same thing (sending/receiving data over 2 channels).

In order to bond 2 DSL connections together your ISP has to support Multi Link Point to Point Protocol (MLPPP).

Assuming your ISP doesn't offer MLPPP (and most don't) then you're stuck with load balancing. The problem with load balancing is it doesn't actually bond your lines, it sends different streams of data (heading towards different destinations) over the 2 connections. You can never split a single stream of data over both channels simultaneously. If you've got 100's of users then load balancing works well as there's going to be a consistent number of simultaneous connections heading towards (and returning from) different destinations. With a single host it's not really going to improve your experience so much.

I have a wifi connection I use on my laptop and occasionally if I'm testing someones PC and they don't have wifi, I'll set up a bridge between the wifi and the LAN port on the back of the laptop then I connect the test PC to the LAN port

using windows XP Pro open network connections highlight the wifi, add it to the bridge, then do the same for the LAN port, voila laptop can see the network and test PC van see the network, first time through you may have to create the bridge

if your router doesn't support DHCP through the bridge (you'll get a duplicate IP error in this case) then set the test PC to a fixed IP outside the address range assigned by the router ... or update the router firmware whichever is easiest for you

I've just read through again and you don't actually want to do this do you, you want to share the bandwidth of two or more connections to an ISP, please ignore this post in that case

basically, we are on virgin media 20mb, and with my new job, I can get a 'free' DSL connection, I want to take these 2 connections and 'bond' them together to use them as one, so I could effectively have a 20+mb down speed and ~1.2mb up speed, the only problem is as I said in my reply, the virgin media connection is through a router, shared to 3 machines (ethernet) and 2 laptops (wireless)..

The DSL connection will be on only one of the machines, so I want to bond the VirginMedia from the LAN (router) and the local (to the machine) DSL into one connection, and maintain LAN connectivity, for this I know I may need 2x NIC's

In that case no you can't bond them (bonding is ISP specific) but you can do some load balance trickery to split the traffic flow a bit.

The easiest way to do it is, as you said, 2 x nics on different subnets and some routing/proxy software and split the traffic between the two connections. Maybe throw all your port 80/port 443 traffic through one connection and everything else through the other. Or chuck all data through one connection except a few selected game ports so you can keep game latency lower on a dedicated gaming connection, etc... best bet is to have a play with it and see what you find works best for you, you probably know how you'd like your network set up better than I do :)