Bridging two internet connections on one PC?

[JL Sargent]

My 14 year old son wants to know. We've been looking at it and so far it hasn't happened. We have Windows 10, two separate wireless networks are available on the pc. We can presently only connect to one at a time. If we could connect to both at the same time, maybe it doubles our internet speed.

 

Our wifi adapter is:

Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi

[pbphoto]

When you say two separate wifi networks are available on the PC, do you mean the PC's wifi adapter sees two different wifi-access-points with different network names (SIDs), or the PC's wifi adapter sees one wifi-access-point with a 5ghz band and a 2.4ghz band?  Regardless, wifi adapters login to one radio on one wifi-access-point at a time.  The best way to get better wifi bandwidth is to be in close proximity to the WAP with a 5ghz radio on a channel that doesn't overlap with your neighbors and connect via 802.11ac.

[JL Sargent]

1 hour ago, pbphoto said:

do you mean the PC's wifi adapter sees two different wifi-access-points with different network names (SIDs),

This. We have our house WIFI ( has a sim card w 4G) and a phones Hotspot (4G data) as our two available.  We have unlimited data plans on both.

 

So this internet adapter apparently is capable of a bridged connection (see below), but it will bridge an ethernet and a wifi connection. It will not bridge two wifi connections as you pointed out.

Knowing that, I guess we could add a router to the mix and have a bridged connection within the parameters of this adapter's capability. Starting to look like a hassle.

 

"DoubleShot Pro – Killer’s DoubleShot Pro Technology which allows you to use WiFi and Ethernet at the same time – even on different networks.  Killer gives you the power to choose which apps go over Ethernet and which go over Wireless. "

 

 

[JJkizak]

1 hour ago, JL Sargent said:

My 14 year old son wants to know. We've been looking at it and so far it hasn't happened. We have Windows 10, two separate wireless networks are available on the pc. We can presently only connect to one at a time. If we could connect to both at the same time, maybe it doubles our internet speed.

 

Our wifi adapter is:

Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi

 

It cuts the internet speed in half if both are in use at the same time with data.

JJK

[JL Sargent]

8 minutes ago, JJkizak said:

It cuts the internet speed in half if both are in use at the same time with data.

Why? The only thing they share is the tower.

 

[pbphoto]

Basically, that adapter lets you dual-home your PC and separate gaming traffic from other browsing traffic.  Unfortunately, in the end, your son's Fortnite traffic will all end up going across a single 4G pipe to the internet 🙂. This isn't such a bad thing - my backup 4G internet connection is faster than my primary AT&T DSL link.

[JJkizak]

12 hours ago, JL Sargent said:

Why? The only thing they share is the tower.

 

 

That's the way they function. Kind of like the laws of physics.

JJK

[JL Sargent]

Example of a similar idea:

2 phones with unlimited data plans setup as wifi hot spots.

2 separate wifi adapters in one computer and each connected to one of the phones.

Software that would manage it.

Wouldn't that double the internet connection? If not, where is the bottleneck?

 

 

[Jeff Matthews]

42 minutes ago, JL Sargent said:

Example of a similar idea:

2 phones with unlimited data plans setup as wifi hot spots.

2 separate wifi adapters in one computer and each connected to one of the phones.

Software that would manage it.

Wouldn't that double the internet connection? If not, where is the bottleneck?

I'm not an expert in this, but it's an interesting idea.  

 

With regard to the software that would manage it, that seems to be the big key.  I don't see how this can be done without a major revamp of the way the internet works across the millions of domains that are out there.

 

When you are browsing and press a button to submit a request to the server, the request goes to a certain web address and may include certain parameters.  For example, if you push a button to play a video, your computer will send a request something like this:  http://www.videosRUs.com/play?stairwayToHeaven.

 

Once that request hits the server, the server responds with data, such as the specified video in our example.

 

Here, you can see that there is a major component in the full process that your proposed software cannot control.  The server is controlled by the web site's owner, such as Youtube, Twitter, etc.  Their own coders write the code that sends data back when a request is received.

 

What you are suggesting is that somebody could write code that installs on your machine that would alter the server response and cause the server to send back only part the data - probably something like every other byte of the data (for 2 wifis), every 3rd byte (for 3 wifis), etc. 

 

In your scenario, you are trying to make one request from each of your wifi connections.  But your request must comply with the server's demand.  There is no such thing as submitting a request like this:  http://www.videosRUs.com/play?stairwayToHeaven/everyOtherByte or http://www.videosRUs.com/play?stairwayToHeaven/everyThirdByte, etc.

 

So, what will really happen is your wifi connections will each submit the same request, and therefore, they will be duplicitous.  

 

I could be completely wrong, but this is my first impression.

 

[pbphoto]

Jeff is correct.  A 4G uplink plus a 4G uplink does not equal an 8G uplink, unless you have a special software driver on your PC and the server you are talking to has software to aggregate data streams from two different IP addresses.  What is your goal here?  Based on the Killer wifi card, I'm assuming you want better gaming performance?

[oldtimer]

30 minutes ago, pbphoto said:

Jeff is correct.

Yeah, but don't get cocky....

[JL Sargent]

2 hours ago, pbphoto said:

What is your goal here?

Just curious if the idea is plausible. Our internet connect is quite good I'd say. Online gaming seems to work fine. His PC has the Gforce 1080 ti 11g card and it has a beautiful picture without any tearing while playing online games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty on max settings.  The Killer wifi card is simply what came in his PC when we got it.

 

2 hours ago, pbphoto said:

the server you are talking to has software to aggregate data streams from two different IP addresses.

Ah, there is the little detail I was unaware of right there.  It's interesting how I never even considered the server on the other end of this.

[Thaddeus Smith]

[avguytx]

The WiFi card can typically only use one WiFi network at a time.  It would be like me sitting here at work (Network admin for the city) and wanting to connect to the 8 wireless SSID's that I can pick up between our IT building, the Police Station, and City Hall.  I can "see" them all but I can only attach to one of them at a time.  WiFi cards can be dual band, 2.4 and 5Ghz but they can only use one or the other at any given moment.  Our city uses two Ritter fiber connection and we have AT&T DSL and the local cable company's fiber as a backup if another fails.  But we also use an aggregator to direct what traffic we want going out what connection.

 

But with a simple home connection.....no, you can't combine speeds with two connections.  Traffic still has to go out of only one channel.

[JohnJ]

I think Teaming is what you're talking about @JL Sargent !

 

I'm on the AMD side of pc things when socket 939 was good a decade ago I had an A8R32MVP Deluxe mb with two ethernet connectors, an Opteron 160 or something that let me do this and the down & upload speeds doubled. They could be configured to work simultaneously. Xp-x64 was the BEST!! 

 

Heck that setup might be in the attic with the lit up corsair ddr2 , Raptor HDDs for Raid1 and PCP&C Silencer (HA!) power supply, I'll look if you're interested.

 

Haven't seen it since for AMD it has only been one ethernet connector on every mb I've had since. Think it used more electrons to do this or more likely ISPs complained to ASUS and other mb makers to stop this practice.

I would not be surprised if an Intel mb could accommodate this now.

If the current mb can handle 1G/sec and the Killer can't you'll have to find a different card.

They might no be made like that anymore.... they just want you to fork out for fiber and tell you you're getting xxx.xxMB/s when you go to their preferred website.

[JL Sargent]

2 hours ago, JohnJ said:

and the down & upload speeds doubled.

I knew it!

 

 

[Oicu812]

Typically, this is handled by a Load Balancer, basically a router that will send a new network request over the least busy transmission line.

 

When you send out a request on a network, like a web request for https://www.microsoft.com, that request and any downloads only happen on one network.  You have a protocol named TCP, which is the "Transmission Control Protocol", and it does a handshake between your machine and the remote server only on one network.  Where a balancer comes in handy is when you are running multiple sessions on one user's desktop, or multiple desktops on your local network.  Using a load balancer will speed up your downloads overall.

[babadono]

On 10/22/2018 at 1:58 PM, Thaddeus Smith said:

I've wanted to post this GIF on soooooooo  many threads   LMAO

[Jeff Matthews]

2 hours ago, Oicu812 said:

Typically, this is handled by a Load Balancer, basically a router that will send a new network request over the least busy transmission line.

 

When you send out a request on a network, like a web request for https://www.microsoft.com, that request and any downloads only happen on one network.  You have a protocol named TCP, which is the "Transmission Control Protocol", and it does a handshake between your machine and the remote server only on one network.  Where a balancer comes in handy is when you are running multiple sessions on one user's desktop, or multiple desktops on your local network.  Using a load balancer will speed up your downloads overall.

Maybe if you are downloading multiple files simultaneously.  In that case, Connection 1 can download File 1, while Connection 2 downloads File 2.  If you need to speed up a single-file download, I still don't see how this can be done.

[Thaddeus Smith]

Link aggregation is a very real thing, but it doesn't multiply your bandwidth or act as a means for multi-lane traffic until you saturate one of the links, which likely isn't going to happen with gigabit ethernet in a home environment. I have 2 NIC's aggregated on my home NAS and 4 NIC's aggregated on my virtualization host (simply because I can) and all but the primary connections essentially sit idle.