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Well, the title says what I'd like to achieve: I'd like some workstations connect through my 1st internet account and some through my second one.

  1. The workstations are in a workgroup. They're not in a domain. So They don't have a server. One workstation has the internet connection and shares the internet through the whole LAN.
  2. I have 2 ADSL internet accounts on that workstation.
  3. The workstation's OS is Windows XP SP2.

I think I should define two http proxy servers on the workstation (probably via a software) and set the IE/Firefox proxy settings on each workstation to the appropriate proxy server. e.g. If I want station A to connect via ADSL1 I should set the proxy settings for ADSL1 as I have defined it in my workstation.
My question is:

  1. is my approach correct? Do I need to use a third party software to be able to achieve what I have described or can I just use Windows connection sharing features?
  2. What if I have to connect via ftp/telnet/etc? should I define other proxy servers and set the appropriate values in workstations as well?
Kamyar
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3 Answers3

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That's one approach...but it doesn't solve other protocols.

if you just want to load balance over the two networks it's as simple as making sure the route cost is the same...route /? for help i think.

The other possibility is to run a linux router in a VM and bridge network connections to the VM so you have a fully configurable router running on the XP host hardware.

Yet another approach is to make everything happen over socks proxies(this can handle any socks aware app or you can try a socks wrapper). You could then run 2 different socks proxies that forward over different links.

RobotHumans
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4

Connect each router to your switch and make sure they have different IPs in the same subnet. To define which internet connection is used by a particular machine, set its default gateway value to the corresponding router.

Neil
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3

Please also refer to @aking1012's answer.

If you are not familiar with routing setups, you can consider dual-WAN routers like the infamous Cisco RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router. These offer reasonable performance at ~$150.

Similar products exist from other brands, and you can also consider dd-wrt on certain router hardware to get similar solution at a lower cost. ( refer to Dual-WAN for simple round-robin load equalization for an example )

AminM
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bubu
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