Just a quick question for the hardware pro's here on elite. Is it possible to run 2 separate broadband connections directly to the same pc one using an Ethernet connection and the other a USB connection without using a dual wan router? Would this type of set up effect the performance of either broadband connection? Would I stay connected at all times using this type of set up? Any input is welcome. Thank you
Your computer is going to be "confused" on which path (i.e. broadband connection) to follow and it will probably default to one router if it does "work". A dual WAN router or load-balancer is meant to serve as a gateway usually for redundancy or it has built-in methods to "balance" traffic and will have a dedicated CPU to determine the traffic, ideally. Your computer can be "hacked" by messing around with the internal routing tables for certain traffic to go down a certain NIC but I'm not sure that's something you want to do. I think you may be better served by getting the dual WAN router if you have two broadband connections and want redundancy. Unless you're pulling massive data that requires bonding the broadband bandwidth, redundancy makes the most sense.
why USB? I have only one Ethernet card on this particular pc so I have to use the USB cable if I want to connect a second broadband connection to this pc. Can I buy another exact copy of the installed Ethernet card and then run the second broadband connection using the 2nd Ethernet cable? I read here that windows has an auto fail over if the first broadband connection goes down. Any insight into this? If I get a dual WAN router will I have to install another Ethernet card in anyway so as the 2 broadband connections run using Ethernet connections rather than 1 USB and 1 Ethernet set up?
Windows won't get confused. Each Broadband connection provided by the ISP is an unique IP address. You can either designate which IP address to use, or Window will find the first one that has signal. If you have a notebook computer, you can give this a try: connect to your broadband, as well as turn on your WiFi to your neighbor's internet. Then pull the plug on the Broadband... you will see the computer switch to WiFi and continue working. The switch over will be transparent if you are only surfing the web. But if your connection is through a proxy server, then you might get denied reconnection. (edit: e.g. trading !!!) Do a google on the web, there are tons of expert info out there.
Tums did a good job explaining Windows "built-in failover" capability. Even mentioned it is only useful for trivial network surfing. And that is limited. Type a search term in your favorite search engine. Click for search, at the same time disconnect the connection being used. Do you really expect search results to be returned over connection 2? Since there is no mention of this setup being used for trading, Tums explaination works. If used for trading the setup WILL NOT WORK transparently. period. That is exactly why multi-WAN routers exist... 1 external interface. Osorico
I think I know what you're trying to do and I don't recommend using your own computer to accomplish that. The best thing would be if you knew your way around Linux or FreeBSD and set up a separate machine as your Internet gateway. Consider that your communication can't really 'hop' across the connections in midstream, the connection would break if it were to be re-established via your other ISP. There are ready-made distributions of Linux for stuff LIKE this, like IPcop, smoothwall, or m0n0wall. Google of course is your friend there but, it's probably too involved for you unless you've got a machine lying around, multiple network cards, and some patience. The best thing is to NOT expect Windows to do such a job it really wasn't made to do. That job is for a *nix based OS, I recommend something based on BSD myself. You could have it failover with much better results, I guarantee you'll have nothing but headaches if you do that with your machine you work on. Plus, I don't trust ANY Windows machine to be directly connected to the Internet, but if you do, please put up the firewall that's built-in. It really is like being in prison and bent over in the showers trying to find your soap (but it's not there). Hope this helps, and not to boast but just to back up my statements a little here: I have the following certifications: A+, Network+, Linux+, Security+ and the CCNA which is heavy on networking.
No. The router will use a single ethernet connection into your PC. You can set it up to either use a single broadband connection and automatically switch over to the second connection if the first fails, or to load balance using both broadband connections simultaneously.
Can anybody recommend a good quality daul WAN router that would support both adsl & adsl+2 broadband.
Can someone tell me if a daul wan router uses a single ip address of its own and not the ip addresses of your isp's when connected to your broker/data provider when you have 2 separate isp connections fed into the daul wan router for failover or does the daul wan router use the ip address of the isp its currently using from with the daul wan router when connected to your broker/data provider? I know when connected too eSignal and NinjaTrader and your connection goes down your back up ISP when used as failover still won't keep you connected to them and you have to reconnect to both platforms using the back up ISP. For eSignal this a quick and easy process but for NinjaTrader this is a total pain NinjaTrader as I have tried to file/disconnect/zenfire and also file/exit and the platform freezes up and I end up having to terminate the program using task manager and then restart NinjaTrader again. Has anybody else using NinjaTrader on a live basis experienced this as well? If not connect to NT then unplug your main ISP currently connected to NT and try disconnect and tell me if you experience the same problem. Thx