Connect to two different routers (using two seperate ethernet ports) at the same time

CharlZA

Honorable
Jan 17, 2014
2
0
10,510
Hi Guys,
Got a very specific idea and hope to find out if it's viable. So first I'll explain my current setup, then explain the ideal use case and will finish with explanation of the use case.

Current setup:
I've got two different ADSL routers connected to two different lines and accounts. My mother board has two Ethernet ports. I have access to both routers (one via a switch the other direct) where I'm currently jumping between depending on the need. Also running Windows 8

Ideal Use Case:
Have both connected to my PC, each using one of the Ethernet ports. Allowing me to be connected to each network and depict which applications uses which network.

Explanation of Use Case:
One line is only used for downloading & Wireless access. The other line is shared with people so don't want to use for downloading. What I actually want is to have certain applications ONLY use the one connection and have the rest of the applications use the other one.

So my question is, is this viable? If so, can anyone point me into the correct direction to search for info on this (Software, guides etc)?
 
Solution
Certain applications would be tricky because then the application itself would have to have knowledge of 2 networks. I suppose you could run in 2 virtual machines and keep the apps separate like that.

The part that is easily doable is to say I want to access ip x.x.x.x on interface 1 and ip y.y.y.y on interface 2.

The first step is to remove the default gateway from one of the 2 interfaces. This will cause all the traffic to flow though the primary interface. Now for any ip that you want to use the secondary connection you put in ROUTE commands and point it to the gateway for the second network.
This can get complex very fast since a web site is many times made up of multiple groups of IP and if you were to send some traffic out...

CharlZA

Honorable
Jan 17, 2014
2
0
10,510
Hi Guys,
Although this is not a solution yet, but asked a friend who directed me to the following:

http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/163502-redirect-network-traffic-over-a-specific-interface/ & http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/163502-redirect-network-traffic-over-a-specific-interface/

Essentially I'll change the metric of the interface that will be used for downloads to a lower metric than the interface used for browsing (thus it becoming the default interface). Then use forcebindip to force my download programs to use the download interface.

Will report back if I had success. So suggestions is still open!
 
Certain applications would be tricky because then the application itself would have to have knowledge of 2 networks. I suppose you could run in 2 virtual machines and keep the apps separate like that.

The part that is easily doable is to say I want to access ip x.x.x.x on interface 1 and ip y.y.y.y on interface 2.

The first step is to remove the default gateway from one of the 2 interfaces. This will cause all the traffic to flow though the primary interface. Now for any ip that you want to use the secondary connection you put in ROUTE commands and point it to the gateway for the second network.
This can get complex very fast since a web site is many times made up of multiple groups of IP and if you were to send some traffic out one internet connection and some out the other the site would see you coming from 2 different IP addresses (your 2 internet routers ip's). In most cases it gets confused and does not work correctly.

This concept in general is called load balancing. There are outrageously expensive hardware devices like F5 that can do this for you to a point. There might be software to help but it is still hard to automate this.
 
Solution