The cost of two phone lines and two ISP accounts is usually more than the cost of ISDN, which many, if not most, can get. It is likely to be much more reliable and much less latent than a dial-up connection. I would look into that sort of solution before I looked to hard at a multiple dial-up solution. Tom Veldhouse ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Spinti" <jspinti at dartdist.com> To: <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 8:17 AM Subject: Re: [TCLUG] modem load balancing question > On Wednesday 31 July 2002 01:38 pm, Lance Linder wrote: > > Hello, > > > > Being new to the list and relatively new to Linux please don't flame me > > to badly ;) That said here is my problem I am trying to solve. > > > > In my situation phone lines and dial up connections are relatively cheap > > but broadband connections of any kind are either non existent or > > ridiculously expensive. What I am hoping to be able to do is set up a > > Linux server/router/firewall for a small LAN of say 4+ desktops. I > > would like to have 2+ modems connected to the Linux box and run some > > software on this box that will balance a load across multiple modems. > > > > The first question is would this be possible? Does Linux or some > > utility that runs on Linux have the capability to balance a load across > > X number of modems and would it be possible that this could increase > > available bandwidth for the client machines or would it sill only be 56k > > max for any given machine? > > I looked at doing this about 2-3 years ago. At the time I was using > multi-link on NT, and wanted to move to Linux. I searched the newsgroups > on multi-link and Linux, and found somebody in Australia had written > something. I sent him an e-mail and he was very helpful. I never > actually did do it. My isp was strictly NT, and couldn't handle > multi-link from anything else--that is something you have to check into, > your ISP has to be able to sync the lines on their end also. > > Multi-link allows you to add the bandwidth of the modems together. I had 3 > 56K modems, with a resulting effective bandwidth of about 147K. > > Not a direct answer to your question, but HTH. > -- > Thanks, > > James Spinti > jspinti at dartdist dot com > 952-368-3278 ext 396 > fax 952-368-3255