2 computers, 2 modems, 2 dsl lines on one network - How?

[Shasoosh]

I want to set up 2 computers with 2 different ISP providers on the same network, for example 192.168.1.1 will be verizon and 192.168.1.2 will be AT&T

What's the easiest way to accomplish that?

Thanks

[neufuse Veteran]

you can do it, especially if you can do vlans easily, BUT the big question is, why do you want to do it?

[+BudMan MVC]

Put your routers on the same network, ie 192.168.1.0/24 -- say 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 then connect via your lan port between routers. Turn off dhcp on one of them or both. On the either the ones you want to use the 2nd router as gateway setup static or all devices as static and point to router you want to use as gateway.

Or better yet just buy a router that supports multiple wan connections.. Of the top a linksys rv042 would work. Since you dsl vs cable you would want to put your modem/routers for your dsl into bridge mode so you not double natting if you get a multiwan router.

Multiwan router has some advantages like loadsharing across the 2 connections and auto failover, etc. Another option if you don't want to buy a multiwan router is if you have a pc laying around you could run say pfsense or ipcop, m0n0wall, etc. etc. that support multiwan -- unlikely you will see any speed increase with 2 different connection but you can share the load across the 2 different connections.

We have actually gone over this quite often, if you dig through some of my older posts I know for a fact I have drawn this up atleast a couple of times. I will see if I can dig one up.

edit: btw here is older thread where I posted a drawing, there have been many others over the years.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/983206-two-isp-need-help-to-manage-network/

[Shasoosh]

Thanks. Interesting stuff!

I think that the rv042 will do, I don't mind getting a new router if it gets the job done. So if I get 2 dsl modems with 2 dsl lines (I do need 2 dsl lines right?) I just connect them to the multiwan router and i'm done? (i'm guessing that 2 dsl modems instead of dsl and cable will be a lot easier right?)

[Roger H. Veteran]

The Linksys RV042 would work as budman already mentioned. We use a RV082 at work to look something like this:

Much better than trying to do it manually.

I also see DD-WRT can do it with a "normal" router as well so you may want to check that out as well.

[+BudMan MVC]

doesn't matter what your connection type is -- be it dsl or cable. Normally with cable you only get a actual modem, ie no nat.. They do sell cable gateway devices modem/router combo, it its less likely isp give you this. But with dsl based I haven't seen just a normal modem in years they are always gateways (modem/router combo) Make sure you can disable the nat feature and just use it as true modem, ie bridge mode where it puts the PUBLIC IP on the device connected to it.

And you could have 1 dsl and other cable - doesn't matter.

edit: yeah dd-wrt could prob do it, here is quick google for dd-wrt and multiwan

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Dual-WAN_for_simple_round-robin_load_equalization

[Shasoosh]

What about the DSL lines, will i need to have 2 separate ones or i can use 2 modems on one line? ( This might be a very dumb question)

[Roger H. Veteran]

What about the DSL lines, will i need to have 2 separate ones or i can use 2 modems on one line? ( This might be a very dumb question)

you'll need 2 lines but then the ethernet cable from each goes into one router (RV042/82 or whatever).

[Shasoosh]

Great.

Thanks everyone!

[dragon2611]

What you appear to be looking for is Policy Based Routing (PBR)

Something like pfSense or RouterOS can do it.

As can quite a few models of Draytek dual wan routers.

I use RouterOS on an Alix2d3 (Although if you need to buy hardware it's much cheaper to just get a routerboard) and have it set to use PBR to pick which of my 2 ADSL lines traffic flows through.

Currently I have it setup so that traffic from my PC's goes via one of the ISP and everything else (Housemates pc's consoles, mobiles.etc) end up going via the other ISP.

If one of the ISP's fails it will usually flip all traffic to the other line although I do need to work on my fail-over detection (1 ISP uses PPP so up/down detection is fairly easy but the other one doesn't so atm I have a script that pings a host on the internet via that ISP to confirm the line is up)

As for DSL modems, I use a Netgear DG834v4 on one of the lines (they have a hidden option to enable bridge mode) and a Zyxel P663-HW-T1 v2 on the other (It's pretty rubbish, but I got it really cheap and it supports bridge mode)