Usually a home router has only one uplink connection, enabling a single internet provider at a time. But suppose I hack my router (ie. installing linux), could I use 2 internet providers then?
4 Answers
"hacking" the router may not suffice, you'll need 'load balancing'.
a spare old computer with 2 NICs and Vyatta Community Edition is certainly cheaper solution than a modern Multi-WAN router.
When you run Vyatta on a standard x86 hardware system, you'll create a powerful network appliance that can run circles around proprietary systems.
You could use a linux router to load balance and share 2+ connections across a LAN.
This article explains how to edit your route tables and /etc/rc.local file to do this.
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Only if it has two physical ports, and you've got two separate lines coming into your house. If that's the case, take a look at this topic on the subject.
Windows can load balance 2 connections. If you have a machine with 2 NICs, you can edit the registry to enable this:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters]
"RandomAdapter"=dword:00000001
"SingleResponse"=dword:00000001
This isn't useful if you want to share the connections with a network though.
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