I'm trying to figure out how to take my two linux routers and combine them so if one of the machines go down, the other will take over.

The How-Tos I've seen all focus on a single machine with multiple ISPs where i have two machines with the same ISP (I have multiple IPs with the same ISP)

Fail over is what I am looking for. If i need to restart one router, i still have internet access.

I was thinking about Load Balancing the internal NICs of both routers and use that load balanced IP as the gateway. Would this work or is there a how-to out there for what i am trying to accomplish?

Thanks!

well you've not described what else you have other than these two boxes. Essentially you can just do some form of IP takeover if these are both able to be a default gateway. Google for "cheap IP takeover" and you'll get a really useful o'reilly hit. You'd want to do more testing than their example, but the principle stands.

Thanks! This is what i was looking for - I never thought of IP Takeover as a search term =D

The reason most of the other howtos use two different providers is that it is highly likely if one of your IPs fails with one provider the other IP(same provider) will be effected as well. Using two different providers drastically reduces the chance of both IPs failing simultaneously.

I understand completely and that is also why i don't need that. I have only 1 ISP, but when I take down my router, my wife gets cranky... I have another router, but to use it i have to change config on a few machines and then I bring up the primary box again so I put everything back...

I'm not doing this for a business, just so I can do more things to my local network without cause downtime to the family.

Also, I found that when I have a power outage, both machines don't always come back on (faulty hardware i suppose). Failover would be nice =D