How to use 2 Local Area Connections at the same time

Question

I am trying to use 2 LAC (Local Area Connections) effectively, one is from my cable (router) and the other coming from my SmartPhone's internet. I got to the point that I can use one of the LAC at the time but what I am trying to look for is that one LAC will work with some softwares and the second LAC will work with all my other softwares. For example: LAC 1 will work only with Google Chrome. LAC 2 will work with any other software that look for internet. I did look for if the windows setup give me the tools to do so, but I can't really find how to do it.. Is there any software that I can use to manage my LACs? Thank you alot! (sorry for my bad english)

Answer 1

Not sure if it's possible "per application" in Windows. A similar approach is to configure a routing table where one of the NICs is the default route, and a specific set of IP or IP ranges is configured to use the second NIC.

In this way for example, all applications connecting to the internet will use the first NIC by default, but when they try to access any of the specific configured IPs/IP ranges they will use the second NIC.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if this can be done through the Window's network area. It really sounds like more of a fire-walling job to me. I don't use Windows Firewall so I can't help you there, but I can say how to do it on Symantec Endpoint Protection; depending on the firewall program you use, you may be able to adapt the instructions, but it must support per application blocking.

Basically you'll need to set up 2 rules on a per application basis. Rule 1 will block access to adapter 1, and rule 2 will allow on adapter 2. This will allow you to FORCE the program to use the adapter you want.

Here's an example image of the result:

In the above image, I setup a virtual machine as a web-server, hosting an HTML file, reading "Congratulations You've....". My rules deny Firefox access to my WIFI adapter, but allow access to my virtual machine's virtual LAN adapter. Firefox can now access any site I put on my virtual machine, but I cannot access anything over my WIFI (which provides internet to my computer) so I can't get to normal sites like Google.

Steps:

1. Open Symantec Endpoint Protection, under "Status" go to the "Network Threat Protection" area, and click the "Options" button. From there select "Configure Firewall Rules".

2. In the "Configure Firewall Rules" area, click "Add" to make a new rule.

3. In the "Add Firewall Rule" pop-up, choose a name, set to allow traffic, and choose the adapter you want this program to be able to use.

4. You can leave all the other tabs on their default settings except the "Applications" tab, go there, and check the box for your application. If it's not listed you can browse for it. Then click "OK" at the bottom of the pop-up.

5. In the "Configure Firewall Rules" area again, click "Add" to make the second rule.

6. In the "Add Firewall Rule" pop-up, choose a name, set to block traffic, and choose the adapter you don't want this program to be able to use.

7. As before you can leave all the other tabs to their default settings except the "Applications" tab, go there, and check the box for your application. If it's not listed you can browse for it. Lastly click "OK" to close the pop-up.

8. Now try using the application, and you should see it using the correct adapter.

Notes:

• Some programs may have more than 1 network requesting executable, in this case you'll need to add all the required ones to your rules.
• If you computer has more than 2 adapters the rest will need to be blocked as well, or standard settings will be applied if the program attempts to access through them.