Combine the bandwidth of 2 connections

AdmnPower

VIP Member
Ok, I have an interesting project I'm thinking about starting. I'm at college and in my room I have 2 different network jacks with which i can use to connect to the school's network. I also have a server running windows server 2003. What I would like to do is connect both jacks in my room to my server and essentially combine the two to achieve a higher amount of bandwidth. Is there a way to make server 2003, in and of it's self or with a 3rd party app, load balance the two connections and use them essentially as one? I know this can be done with linux, but I don't really have an extra PC that I can turn into a linux box nor do I know a single thing about linux. Thanks for the help.
 
interesting .........i dont know but will tell ya i do a lot of newsgroups.
i always had the impression the question you are asking is related to backbones. I have 20 with giganews.

how in the bluemoon you would do it i don't know.
 
Im listening. im as interested as you. ive heard the name bridge come up many times. i didnt have a clue. this is my learning curve. im watching.
 
Almost certain this wouldn't work. See, the network infrastructure has its limits, its only capable of handling so much and even if you could make it work with both cables, the throughput is the same... it's like making people run through a gate that's only big enough to allow one person to pass through at once, even if you arranged all the people in two lines instead of one, you'd still be able to send one person through the gate at once.
 
Almost certain this wouldn't work. See, the network infrastructure has its limits, its only capable of handling so much and even if you could make it work with both cables, the throughput is the same... it's like making people run through a gate that's only big enough to allow one person to pass through at once, even if you arranged all the people in two lines instead of one, you'd still be able to send one person through the gate at once.

Thats a very nice analogy, but I think what he is trying to do is make a second gate. Then you could send two people at a time through. Im watching this thread...

I know with some motherboards they do it automatically, without linux...
 
Thats a very nice analogy, but I think what he is trying to do is make a second gate.
Yea, but in my analogy the gate is kinda like the network infrastructure - unless the entire network at the college is upgraded to higher speeds, there is only going to be one gate so to speak.
 
Well my connection tops out at around 17megabit down speed and 9.5 megabit upspeed. I know more than one person can get that kind of speed at once. I'm pretty sure they limit speed primarily based on mac address rather than registered user. So I still think there should be a way to combine two connections and load balance between the two. The important thing would be the load balancing because if it were just a spill over type of think when one maxes out, obviously the down speed of the web connection wouldn't max out the down speed of the physical connection between me and the gateway. Thus it would never use the second connection. I'd like to be able to do this with my current hardware rather than having to get a new motherboard.
 
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