I'm about to move into a house with a couple of relatives and I was wondering what would be required to take two broadband connections and combine them into internet access for a single LAN. Specifically I intended to use two Comcast cable lines (likely a 6mbit and an 8mbit). I'm kind of curious as to how my external IP would work since the two lines would each have a different dynamic address. I could live with using one of the two connections for each computer, but I still need everything to come into a single LAN. If I could somehow combine both lines, then that would be even better.
I have an old Pentium 3 machine that I could slap a couple of NICs in and using for firewall/port forwarding purposes, but if a traditional router would work better that's fine too. I would need to familiarize myself more with Linux and hopefully use it on the firewall machine, although WinXP is a possibility. I intend to use wifi for three computers to connect, so I need to have that built in somewhere.
My network knowledge isn't all that extensive, but I have picked up things over the years, so I feel like I could probably implement most of the LAN except the outgoing connections. I have no idea about how to combine multiple internet connections into one outgoing line. Keep in mind that the dedicated firewall PC could be used with a third NIC if it could combine them somehow. And I probably can't afford to spend more than about $200 on new network hardware (excluding making my own cables).
Anyway, thanks for any suggestions ahead of time.
I have an old Pentium 3 machine that I could slap a couple of NICs in and using for firewall/port forwarding purposes, but if a traditional router would work better that's fine too. I would need to familiarize myself more with Linux and hopefully use it on the firewall machine, although WinXP is a possibility. I intend to use wifi for three computers to connect, so I need to have that built in somewhere.
My network knowledge isn't all that extensive, but I have picked up things over the years, so I feel like I could probably implement most of the LAN except the outgoing connections. I have no idea about how to combine multiple internet connections into one outgoing line. Keep in mind that the dedicated firewall PC could be used with a third NIC if it could combine them somehow. And I probably can't afford to spend more than about $200 on new network hardware (excluding making my own cables).
Anyway, thanks for any suggestions ahead of time.