Hello I recently moved into my parents house, who already has a cable modem, router, and a linux computer setup. I brought with me from my old apartment a seperate cable modem, router, and linux computer. I was playing around with the cable modem connection and split the cable line going into my parents cable modem and plugged in my old cable modem from my old apartment. Both cable modems worked and had two distinct ip's. So I was wondering if it is possible to combine both cable modems going into one linux computer and do some load balancing, where the upload speed would double as well as download speed doubling. Currently each cable modem gets 5 mbytes download and 1/2 mbytes upload. The reason I want to do this is obviously be able to download faster from one site, also I occasionally run a shoutcast server and let friends access files from me through ftp, and would hope some kind of load balancing would double throughput from a single ip (not sure if that is possible)...any help would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know much about doing that, but I do know a bit about how cable companies keep track of modems and their accounts. Are you continuing to pay for your cable connection? If not, you're gonna lose the use of your modem sometime, as the cable companies have its MAC address bonded to your account. At the moment, your modem is either online under your old account or its on your parents' account and will stop working as soon as the system recognizes that its not "on the account". BTW, broadbandreports might have an answer to your question.

I don't think you can multiplex two cable modems to get hight D/L speeds... It would be nice though huh! I would think that Linux would not handle that and it would have to be a hardware solution...

KC

I think that what you are looking at implementing is some type of proxy server. A single download would not be sped up however, because such a dual connection would have to be set up at both ends. In any case you need a second account for the second cable modem.

thanks for the quick reply, well the cable company is still billing me for this month, and I have not yet decided whether to keep the cable account, if I can have some kind of load balancing system, I will definitely keep my cable modem service, but if not I may cancel at the end of the month and use my parents only, or try out this setup.
For instance I run a shoutcast server and could have a relay server on my second computer going through the second cable modem....use bandwidth intensive applications ftp/usenet/p2p stuff on one cable modem line and have the other free for webbrowsing between me and the family...hopefully that makes sense but a little confused on how to set up one computer to have 2 nics, one going out straight to a cable modem, and the other nic going into a router to share files among the local line, but I do not want that computer to access the other cable modem line...if I cannot do load balancing.

Basically
.....Linux1 computer-->nic1 ---> Router -----> Cable Modem Line1
..................................................^../
................................................./ ../
................................................/ ../
....................................nic1..../...V
............Linux2 Computer
.................................nic2--------------------->Cable Modem Line2
(If I cannot do some kind of loadbalancing...then I do not want Linux2 to use Cable Modem Line1 at all and exclusively use Cable Modem Line2, as well as Linux1 not use Cable Modem Line2)

..im pretty sure it is possible to set it up this way...but not sure what kind of setting I would need to use on Linux2 for nic1 to be able to see local computers behind the router, but not go through the router and use Cable Modem Line1....

..any help greatly appreciated...

http://www.linksys.com/products/prod...id=589&scid=29

that will combine two broadband connections and load balance. It can also combine the speeds from what it says.

The 4port model is around 100-150$.

Linux would be cheaper. I am interested in this also. If it is not possible in linux I may buy one of these routers.

should have mentioned I am aware of hardware routers that do load balancing, but I dont want to pay for another router, would much rather work with the equipement I already have...thanks