At 13:16 10/06/06, gary r. tennesen wrote:
>I have an update: I now have cable internet and DSL internet at my 
>home with a wireless router on each.  When cable goes down (and it 
>already has) I have everybody go to the system tray and change SSID's 
>from "cable" to "DSL."
>
>Here's where I could use some expertise:
>
>we have shared drives and printers on our 6-computer home network -- 
>when 2, active internet surfer/users move to the DSL router, their 
>resources are unavailable to those of us who haven't switched over yet.
>
>This goes back to my original question ~ is there a way to multi-link 
>both services so that they are somewhat redundant and serving one 
>network segment?

Hi Gary

I connect to the Internet in a similar way. I have 7.5kb/sec Road 
Runner Cable and 1.5kbps Verizon DSL. Here's the solution that I chose:

I purchased a Xincom XC-DPG502 Twin WAN Router. It has two 10/100 
Ethernet ports (2 WAN inputs) and a 4 port 10/100 Ethernet switch (4 
LAN outputs). Basically, it acts like any typical router (NAT, DHCP, 
Firewall, etc.) which lets you share a broadband Internet connection 
between several home or business computers.

But the Twin WAN router allows simultaneous connection to two broadband 
connections (as long as they come in via Ethernet, i.e., not via USB). 
If one source goes down, the Twin WAN router instantaneously switches 
to the other. In my experience, this redundancy works perfectly. The 
twin WAN router also allows you to combine the bandwidths of the two 
broadband connections using several methods. This won't allow you to 
download a single file to one computer any faster, but it will allow 
faster download of multiple files to one or more computers. You can 
pick from several methods to "balance the load" between your two 
broadband connections. (By traffic measured in bytes, or by traffic 
measured in packets, or by traffic measured in sessions, or by traffic 
measured in IP addresses. I chose "sessions" because I found it 
irritating to end up using the slower DSL connection alone at most 
webpages.)

The Twin WAN router also has an advanced firewall (much more 
configurable and better I think than the "firewall" protection provided 
by most NAT routers) and many advanced network features. You'll have to 
download and browse through the user guide or quick start guide (see 
link below) to see what I mean. In the two years I've used it, I've 
found it capable or doing everything that I've ever wanted a router to 
do for my home network. (I've simultaneously connected wireless access 
points and other firewalls and more switches with up to eight computers 
and four networked printers to the Xincom. So far, I haven't run into 
any bugs or problems. I've had problems with connections freezing on 
other consumer grade routers...but never with the Xincom.)

<http://www.xincom.com/twr502.html>

I think I paid over $200 for mine two years ago. Clicking "purchase" on 
the above web page, I found that it costs $162 from PC Connection, $147 
from Provantage, $170 from Tiger Direct, . Maybe you can do better 
elsewhere. Xincom also sells a cheaper 402 model and a more expensive 
602 model. You might check them out. I picked the middle model because 
I read a glowing review of it somewhere.

Regards,
Bill

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