Yes, but it is not a turnkey solution and is not for sale - I have been toying with the idea and offering it as a trader solution...As if I didn't have enough to do already... nitro
So this hawking thing is just failover? No load balancing? Is the second "WAN" truly broadband, or is it analog modem? According to hawking, both WAN inputs are broadband. As far as I know, no load balancing, just auto failover for disconnect or overload. I don't know if overload value is fixed or changeable.
The problem with automatic backup devices is that they will often not detect the *right* kind of problems. Example: uunet has a power outage at a big data center because they can't pay their bills. The route from you to your quote data provider travels through this particular uunet center. Your quotes are dead. But your internet connection is still working fine, so your backup router doesn't think there is any problem. No rollover. There are too many problems other than "my ISP is down". We need a device that we can program some intelligence into. I.e. "switch to backup if unable to ping 1.2.3.4 or 5.6.7.8 for more than 60 seconds". -Jeff
Ok...and let's add world peace and Liz Taylor staying married for more than 6 months to our wish list.
Most of the SMC routers have that feature. I have the SMC7004ABR (Barricade) at home. If DSL is not available it dials via 56k or ISDN, but I haven't tested it so far.
For a discretionary trader, a second PC on a second connection is a very good solution. If your primary broadband is having problems, the backup is already up and running. For some setups (like mine unfortunately), the answer isn't so simple. I use Tradestation2000, so my system collects and stores the incoming data. Changing to a second PC is very inconvenient. TS automatically trades my systems for me. I actually work in an office outside my house 2 days/week, leaving the PC to trade unattended. The systems are low volume methods (maybe 1 trade/day), so short downtimes are not a problem. But I know that an extended outage is coming sometime. Maybe today, as I see dark clouds on the horizon LOL. I have a beefy UPS. I dont have any iron clad internet backup. The question is in the logic of when to change to the backup, not so much whether the backup is broadband or dialup.
I am leaning towards the software solution for now... called MidPoint. I'll try it and post the results here when I'm done. It is supposed to provide service failure backup (provided you have 2 services hooked up, of course) in the background seamlessly and make the most use of both bandwidth somehow (won't increase the speed to sum of the 2 but will make things quicker by splitting up the way different applications are being routed to each service). If you have a network at home...like a work PC and a home PC.... then I would imagine you have to have a router (a typical Linksys) to which you plug in one service and output it to both PCs...and have the second service plugged directly into your work PC. You would need 3 network cards: 2 on your work PC and 1 on your home PC. No need to have the software installed in your home PC since backup is not really necessary on that PC...although if you wanted to utilize both bandwidth, then you would have to install the software on both PCs...have 2 network cards on both PCs...and also have either 2 routers OR one of those fancy dual broadband routers like Nextland or Symantec. Wow....is any of this idea going to work? I really wonder. I would be amazed if it actually did work.
I would never get the software solution version...If I were going to pay for this stuff, I want to plug it in and go...Having to add three PCI cards to my computer is likely to cause you no ends of headaches if you have a home style PC motherboard (as opposed to a server style motherboard, which is what I always use.) "Home style" pc's have so much junk in them already, you may not have three PCI slots available. Further, even if they are "empty" there may be all kinds of IRQ conlficts, etc. If I were you, I would try the hardware solution...Actually, try them all...you will increase your understanding of networking, which is a good thing in today's world... nitro