Two modems in one computer.

ballooba

Just wondering what happens when you put two modems in one computer?

(And connect at the same time).

fletch

Well you would need 2 telephone lines cause otherwise you would just get a line busy on the 2nd modem.....interesting tho....Mmmm I'd like 2 try that but I only have one telephone line

Esel

Diamond Supra had that feature available a few years ago. It was called shotgun. You needed two phone lines, and I presume it didn't just work automagically.

TinCool

You can have two modems in the one pc, but as fletch pointed out, you'll need two telephone lines. You can "multilink" them together. I tried this years ago and it's a bit pointless, it doesn't double your bandwidth for a start and you'll need to find an ISP that supports multilinking.

TC.

ballooba

If it doesn't double your bandwidth then it's pretty pointless???

TinCool

ballooba wrote:

If it doesn't double your bandwidth then it's pretty pointless???

I wasn't too clear in my post. I didn't notice that my bandwidth had doubled but apparently that's exactly what it's supposed to do. I'm sure to accomplish this to best affect you'd be better off to use two identical modems and again, you'll need an ISP that supports multilinking however.

stevenmu

I think it lets you have two downloads running both at the maximum of each modem so you can kind of get double bandwidth. For just one download though you'd just have the max bandwidth of one of your modems if that makes sense.

RicardoSmith

stevenmu wrote:

I think it lets you have two downloads running both at the maximum of each modem so you can kind of get double bandwidth. For just one download though you'd just have the max bandwidth of one of your modems if that makes sense.

Are you making this up off the top of your head? The limit is your internet connection, not the modem.

seamus

In theory, right

You have two separate lines. So, in theory you do have twice the bandwidth because you have two individual 56k lines to work with.

However, when you dial up with one modem, it requests an IP address. That IP address is bound to that modem. When you dial with the second modem, you are given a second IP address, which is bound to the second modem.

So now, you have two IP addresses. In general, web traffic is between two IP addresses - one at each end. So, for a connection to a server, you may only use one IP address, or one modem, which gives you a functional bandwidth for any one download of 56K.

You could connect to the same server twice using each modem, but you won't be able to double your bandwidth to download one file. You'll only be able to download two separate files at 56K each.

There may be a piece of software out there that provides a virtual adapter to your machine. So this piece of software tells your computer that it has an ip address (say 10.10.20.30) and your computer uses this IP address for all its web communication. Meanwhile, this piece of software takes each network/Internet request, and co-ordinates them, splitting them between the two modems. A single web page can contain 30 or 40 different network requests, so it could, in theory increase your bandwidth for general web usage (or at least appear to increase your bandwidth).

Does this piece of software exist? *shrug*

Capt'n Midnight

Yes you can put two modems in one PC

You can also use multilink in XP to bond them together, but AFAIK your ISP must support this.

Since it cost twice as much to use, not much point really