What happens if i am connected to 2 different networks?

Question

i am just curious. with wireless+Ethernet or dual Ethernet, i can connect to 2 different networks at 1 time. but i noticed that if i connect wirelessly and connection with Ethernet is up, the internet sometimes goes down. i think the Ethernet internet is not so stable at time.

so my question is, when i have more than 1 connection to the internet, it can't load balance the traffic? maybe i am dreaming?

it wont automatically connect to the other connection if 1 goes down?

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure what you're referring to is bridging

You can bridge the two connections in your network settings to make them act as one. Otherwise, depending on your system, it would either default to one or just not accept incoming data.

With both bridged together you don't really stand to gain anything if you're connecting to the internet because your bottleneck will almost always be the router.

Considering that you're wireless connection will usually be either 54 mbit or higher and you're ethernet will be 100 or 1000 mbit. Whereas, internet connections usually top off @ 20 mbit for expensive premium accounts and 4-6 mbit for 'normal' user accounts.

IE, your internet connection won't get any faster by bridging the connections.

Answer 2

It's based on binding order. In windows XP this is in Network Settings -> Advanced -> Advanced settings.

Answer 3

It is OS-dependent but, generally, the OS will not attempt to do any load-balancing but instead pick one network card and gateway to use and simply route all traffic through that unless the network is disconnected.

Answer 4

No, it's a dream, you can't balance load as you can't split the connection,
you would need special software written for that purpose.

Yes, if one connection goes down Windows will pick the other automatically.

Answer 5

There are ways to bind specific applications to different network interfaces.

However, unless you're using specific software like the above, or the software natively binds to one interface (common on linux), anything trying to access the Internet will just follow the default route in your routing table.