Best of both worlds?

[John Connor]

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate and have had trouble with the network cable that wraps around the house and plugs into the router. I have been meaning to re run cable, but I am too damn lazy. So as a quick fix I installed a USB network adapter. Now I have gone and tried 2 USB WIFI adapters and they both sucked. What would happen was the connection speed would be great and all of a sudden the speed would drop dramatically and give me a piss poor connection. I just retried one of the USB adapters and it was holding steady at 18 Mbps until just recently it went to crap mode again where it was very slow.

Now the network cable runs fine except while gaming it can give me a hiccup every now and then and disconnect me from the server. Even worse is Punkbuster will kick me off the server saying that its losing key packets.



My question. When I plugged in the WIFI adapter I would disconnect the network cable. But when I was downloading something I was getting crappy performance with the USB WIFI adapter and just said screw it and plugged in the network cable while the USB WIFI adapter was plugged in. Now I have better speed again of course, but I was wondering if the network cable hiccups again will the WIFI adapter pick up the slack since they are both connected? I see in the network properties that both connections show up, but when I click see full map then it told me it couldn't. Even when the WIFI adapter was unplugged and just using the LAN connection. I do turn of NetBIOS so not sure if that had anything to do with it.

So, do I get best of both worlds here with both a LAN connection and a WIFI connection connected to my computer at the same time? I thought perhaps Windows would network team them both. If this works then it would be great for redundancy.

 

[ch33zw1z]

No, windows isn't picking up the slack or teaming them for redundancy. When one goes offline, the other one will work, but the transition between adapters won't be transparent.

https://www.google.com/search?q=win...hrome.0.69i57.4482j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[John Connor]

Then how can I network team them both?

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.ezlan.net/loadbalance.html

 

[ch33zw1z]

Then how can I network team them both?

My only experience with teaming NICs is at a server level. I don't know of any home user products that will allow this.

Maybe someone else will chime in.

 

[Gryz]

http://www.ezlan.net/loadbalance.html

That works for load-balancing over two connections from the router in your house to two ISPs. (Or 2 connections to the same ISP). It doesn't work for load-balancing two LAN connections between your home-router and your PC.

Besides, even when load-balancing over 2 links to 2 ISPs, there are severe shortcomings. E.g.

With Load Balancing one single file will not exceed download speed of 300KB/sec. However you can download 2 files at 300KB/sec. or 4 files at 150KB/sec. etc.

It's because of how IPv4 works. There is nothing in the specs that is about multi-homing end-stations. Nor is there anything that helps multi-homing sites or ASs. And thank the IPv6-designers, for insisting that IPv6 should not be any better than IPv4. We're stuck with crap technology. (With respect to these problems).

 

[John Connor]

What about this? http://v2.nat32.com/index.html

 

[SecurityTheatre]

What about this? http://v2.nat32.com/index.html

What about it?

It's intended to serve as a router for your PC.

What exactly are you trying to do? Is your Ethernet cord not fast enough?

I suggest unplugging your wifi and using the wire. Assuming it's gigabit, it's going to be somewhere around 50 times faster than the wireless.

You can set up some sort of aggregation, but all that usually does is split tcp tunnels between two interfaces, so some downloads will be over the wireless and some will be over the wire. You'll quickly realize that this sort of solution is intended for two connections that are a similar speed and reliability.

It handles macro-reliability (over the course of 30 minutes), rather than micro-reliability (over the course of seconds). If one link drops, a chunk of your traffic just stops working for a 30 seconds or so, until it times out and reconnects on the other link.

What you want to do is not practical, nor does it serve a great deal of use. ;-)

 

[JackMDS]

What about it?


What exactly are you trying to do? Is your Ethernet cord not fast enough?

Yeah this is the right question.

It is so because most people understand that putting a $10 bill into a bigger vallet does not make it $100, they can not apply the principle to Computer technology.

 

[John Connor]

I found this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258487/en-us

I changed the metric in the adapters.

 

[John Connor]

And I found this. http://www.geekswhoknow.com/articles/load-balance-two-internet-connections.php

 

[SecurityTheatre]

And I found this. http://www.geekswhoknow.com/articles/load-balance-two-internet-connections.php

Yes, but this uses a random adapter for each connection.

Unless your connections are similar speed, half your stuff will be slow and half will be fast.

I'll ask again. Why?

 

[Cabletek]

Then how can I network team them both?

If you don't rerun that damn cable I'm telling skynet to start looking for packet losers.

Seriosuly, your not getting anything out of running two connections to one computer off the same ISP. RERUN THE CABLE. Why pay for a load balancing hardware, add complexity pointlessly to your setup, when you can rerun some catx cable which you probably already have lying around?.

My suggestion: Go to bed early, and do the deed.

http://www.mattsmoviesounds.co.uk/sounds/search_feelings.wav

 

[seepy83]

I recommend that you replace your (presumably faulty) network cable, put the NIC metrics back to their default values, and stop trying to Team a wired NIC with a wireless one because it's not a good idea.

Regarding the metrics - by default, Windows prefers a wired NIC over a wireless one when they are on the same network/subnet. That's the way it should be. A wired connection is pretty much always more reliable and faster than wireless. If you find yourself in a scenario where you want the wireless NIC to have a higher priority, then I would just unplug the network cable.

 

[imagoon]

I recommend that you replace your (presumably faulty) network cable, put the NIC metrics back to their default values, and stop trying to Team a wired NIC with a wireless one because it's not a good idea.

Regarding the metrics - by default, Windows prefers a wired NIC over a wireless one when they are on the same network/subnet. That's the way it should be. A wired connection is pretty much always more reliable and faster than wireless. If you find yourself in a scenario where you want the wireless NIC to have a higher priority, then I would just unplug the network cable.

Windows prefers the lowest metric no matter the interface type. If you configure a 28.8 k baud connection to metric 1 and a 8 way bonded 40Gb connection as metric 2, the 28.8k baud connection will be used over the 320Gb connection.

Wireless N can easily win over a 100Mb connection using auto metrics.

 

[seepy83]

Windows prefers the lowest metric no matter the interface type. If you configure a 28.8 k baud connection to metric 1 and a 8 way bonded 40Gb connection as metric 2, the 28.8k baud connection will be used over the 320Gb connection.

Wireless N can easily win over a 100Mb connection using auto metrics.

I know it will follow whatever metrics are set. What I was trying to say is that the default metrics are typically the best way to go. I guess I just didn't word it very well. Windows sets slower connections (for example, wireless) to a higher metric than faster connections (for example, 1gig ethernet).

 

[imagoon]

I know it will follow whatever metrics are set. What I was trying to say is that the default metrics are typically the best way to go. I guess I just didn't word it very well. Windows sets slower connections (for example, wireless) to a higher metric than faster connections (for example, 1gig ethernet).

My point was more that you can't assume the cable will win because wireless is not always the slowest in all cases.

Real world case out there is wireless N above 200mbps with a 100mb wired gear. Auto metrics will set the wireless card to 10 and the cable to 20 and use the wireless.

 

[John Connor]

I'll ask again. Why?

Because I'm just too damn lazy. I first have to buy more LAN cable and then I have to look up the color code and seen as how I'm color blind it's no easy task. I manged to wire up three other connections that don't have problems, but this one I don't know what the deal is. I even tested the line with a network tester and every wire 123 and 6 showed up fine. I even used the other 4 wires and still couldn't get a connection. I may try another port on the router and see if I still have trouble. The router ( A WRT54GL flashed with DD-WRT) is like 6 years old now. Been going strong and I don't have any other connection problems except this one.

All I want to do for the time being is have both the LAN and the WIFI and when the LAN hiccups the WIFI will provide a data stream. I set the LAN metric to 1 and the WIFI metric to 2.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I don't know how teaming with wifi would work but if you really want to team I would just get a dual port nic. You need a managed switch and have to setup teaming at the switch too. I never done this myself but that's what I understand needs to be done, at least.

 

[imagoon]

Because I'm just too damn lazy. I first have to buy more LAN cable and then I have to look up the color code and seen as how I'm color blind it's no easy task. I manged to wire up three other connections that don't have problems, but this one I don't know what the deal is. I even tested the line with a network tester and every wire 123 and 6 showed up fine. I even used the other 4 wires and still couldn't get a connection. I may try another port on the router and see if I still have trouble. The router ( A WRT54GL flashed with DD-WRT) is like 6 years old now. Been going strong and I don't have any other connection problems except this one.

All I want to do for the time being is have both the LAN and the WIFI and when the LAN hiccups the WIFI will provide a data stream. I set the LAN metric to 1 and the WIFI metric to 2.

It still won't work. Teaming is a special function where adapters share the load based on one of several load balancing algorithms that basically require switch support to actually work where just having 2 nics with different metrics provides.... well almost nothing since the failing nic needs to be 100% down before the higher metric is used. A fail over team does what you want but requires the link to fully go down to be have the backup be used but is rarely supported over multiple mediums. A bad connection is a connection and won't cause a fail over team to fail to another device. Teams and fail over teams also share IP addresses and mac addresses so applications don't have to deal with IP change.