hi all ! I have 2 connections. 1) Mine, paid for me with my own router (connected to PC using a Ethernet cable) 10 MB 2) Shared internet connection with a router (connected to PC via wireless) 10 MB Both connections are by the same internet provider. I want to combine both connections so I can have 10+ MB of internet speed. Sadly when I tried by bridge connection I didnt get any increase in speed. Plus if by any chance any of the 2 are down the internet wont work at all. Any advice? Thanks !
Do you currently have two modems? Just bridging them won't work. You need a router with dual WAN ports that supports Link Aggregation. It will essentially turn both connections into one big pipe. It looks like this is supported by pfSense, so you could build a router to do it (you will need at least 3 NICs; 2 WAN, 1 LAN). Your ISP might support Bonding... but I've never met anyone who actually has this set up (most dual WAN setups are for failover, and therefore different ISPs).
If your two connection isn't from the same ISP, it would have the advantage of to have less downtime! Check out how Load-Balancing is working!! That would give you a better view of what you're dealing with! Pfsense is one of the Free apps which could be used to build a system with more than one WAN connection. Another Apps is Smothwall Express, which is better than Pfsense! Just, using that apps in the correct manner, means, they will be run on their own computer. The two Internet Connections (WAN) are going to go into the two Modems, from which they'll going via LAN Cables to the computer which holds the special software (Pfsense/Smoothwall). That Computer has at least 3 NIC's: 2 for WAN (LAN Cable from Modem's) 1 for LAN (to the LAN-Switch) As those apps are having also Firewall's and other security Apps, that computer running those apps, could be called a Hardware Firewall. That has the advantage that you didn't need any Firewall in any of the machines on your Network! Those Apps (Pfsense/Smoothwall) are highly configurable, with much higher security than you'll have on Windows etc.! I use such setup in my own company for a long time as well as by several of my corporate customers! And I use Smoothwall Express, just to mention, had even tested Pfsense, just it wasn't as good. By one customer we've 4 Internet Connections. And also just to mention: you'll not get higher speed for downloads etc., just you could 2 connection to two different sources/targets at the same time! In your case with 2 times 10MB you could get max. 2 x 10 MB, but 1 x 20MB!