It might be worth having a read of
http://linux-ip.net/html/adv-multi-internet.html
and the like. It talks of "split[ting] traffic arbitrarily across multiple ISPs for reasons like failover and to accommodate greater aggregate bandwidth than would be available on a single uplink."
You might want to route all your network traffic via a single computer (running Linux, of course) which would act as DHCP server, and then this box routes it out via one of the routers. It would be able to intelligently filter all BT Vision traffic and only route that via the BT router, for example. Of course your single computer might need 3 ethernet ports unless you can configure your routers to use static IPs and not act as DHCP; or replace one or both routers with USB modems. (You can get USB<->ethernet adaptors too.)
Benjie.
On 24 Aug 2012, at 09:53, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Aug 2012 at 07:40:12AM +0100, linux@??? wrote:
>> Hi all
>>
>> This is a bit convoluted and a bit techie but please bear with
>> me. My question boils down to: Can a BT vision box find the BT
>> Home hub it needs if there is another router on the same LAN and
>> that other router is not part of the btinternet network?
>
> I think your basic problem is that you can't have two DHCP servers
> or routers on the same subnet at the same time. If they are on
> separate subnets and there is a router between them this it may
> work, but even then you would need to add a route so that the two
> routers know that the other subnet can be reached via the new
> third router.
>
> I maybe wrong but I would be tempted to keep the networks separate
> from each other, but if you need to combine them then you could
> use a single Linux box to act as a router, taking all input from
> router A into one ethernet port, all input from router B into a
> second ethernet port and all the rest of your network being
> connected to a third port on the box. Linux should be able to
> "bind" the two network together.
>
>
>> For various reasons, I've been trying to build a home network that has a backup if one of our broadband connections fails. As such, we have two phone lines and a different broadband connection down each - therefore two routers: one btinternet, one zen.
>>
>> A mate gave me a free BT vision box yesterday and said all I needed to do was plug it in and, providing I have bt total broadband (which I do), all would be well - not so. When I plugged it all in, it didn't work (error code C03 fwiw which is some sort of connection problem from googling) but my first suspicion was that it had picked up the zen router not the bt home hub - which was exactly what had happened. Having quickly separated the two, I got it
>> connected directly to the bt home hub and indeed it picked up its IP address from there - but still wouldn't go any further (error C03 again). It turns out that I need to subscribe to BT Vision (so my mate was wrong!) which I don't mind at ?4 per month but without (presumably? disabling dhcp server on the zen router) I can't force the bt vision+ box to "find" the bt home hub as it doesn't seem
>> to have a manual IP configuration. Unless, that is, the bt vision+ box is clever enough to find the bt home hub in another way. The fact that my first test last night saw it pickup an ip address from my zen router makes me think the vision box expects only one router on the network and
>> that router has to be the bt home hub.
>>
>> Anybody know anything on this one?
>>
>> In principle, I don't mind disbaling dhcp on the zen router - I think I know how to get most devices to have static ip addresses and gateways (ps3, ipad, laptops) but not sure about things like kindles. The minor issue might be that zen is Fibre so disabling dhcp on the zen router would mean the only dhcp server would be on the bt homehub - which is a slower connection (and I'm not paying for
>> two fibre connections - you can take single point of failure too far!!).
>>
>> Sorry I've waffled a bit - couldn't really see how to explain any more quickly.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Rob
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Please post to: Hampshire@???
>> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
>> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --
> Adam Trickett
> Overton, HANTS, UK
>
> I never really understood how there could be things that would
> drive you insane just because you knew them until I ran into Windows.
> -- anon
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@???
> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
> --------------------------------------------------------------
--
Please post to: Hampshire@???
Web Interface:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
LUG URL:
http://www.hantslug.org.uk
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