Using both ethernet and wireless.

[tomoya-kun]

I've got 2 lines at the moment from 2 ISPs.  Can I connect to wifi, plug in an ethernet and use both?  And say, set torrents to ethernet and everthing else to wifi?

[bork]

You can have both on without causing a problem, its just that the system will have a preference on which of the two it will use.  Assuming your using windoz, do a "route print" in a dos box and look at the bottom where it say's 'Default Gateway:'; that's the network that is going to be used.

Your system will use that entry to make decisions  on were to send its traffic out on.  The receiving system can only send traffic back to yours based on the direction it came from.

Some more about Windoz - having both on can cause weird directory synchronization problems it you are use it.

[Pentium100]

I've got 2 lines at the moment from 2 ISPs.  Can I connect to wifi, plug in an ethernet and use both?  And say, set torrents to ethernet and everthing else to wifi?

I assume you use Windows XP.

In theory yes, however, the configuration may be a bit complicated.

If your Ethernet connection has a static IP, then set it to a large metric (larger than the one on WiFi), set the IP in uTorrent as the one to bind to (net.bind_ip and net.outgoing_ip).This way, uT will use Ethernet and everything else will use WiFi, if WiFi fails, everything will use Ethernet, if Ethernet fails uT won't work.

If your Ethernet connection has a dynamic IP or you want to separate them more cleanly, you will have to use additional machine (either real or virtual, let's assume virtual). Create a virtual machine with two network cards (one bound to host OS (host OS will have 3 network connections now  - two internet connections and one connection to the guest OS), the other directly to the real Ethernet network card), install your OS of choice and use BitTorrent there, or anything else you want to use there. Unbind TCP/IP protocol on the Ethernet connection on your host OS.

This way your host OS will use WiFi only, guest OS will only use Ethernet. The additional network connection between host and guest will be used to put downloaded files on the host (I assume you can set up file sharing).

You can also use a virtual machine as a router to load balance between the two connections (so that they both are used for everything) or use it to specify which traffic goes trough which connection (in that case you will have to while list which ports go trough WiFi, since BitTorrent uses a lot of different ports and is difficult to filter). If you are interested in this option, tell me, since I am too lazy to write it up now and the previous way is a bit easier.

If you need diagrams let me know.


UPDATE: when I wrote this post I did not see bork's reply. Anyway, setting a default gateway to WiFi should work, but do not forget to have Ethernet's gateway too (but with higher metric) since otherwise uT won't be able to make connections. But thi is basically the same as my first option and needs static IP for Ethernet.

[tomoya-kun]

I see.  I think I got it working, but some programs (steam) try to use ethernet even if my torrents are using that whole connection 

[Xiong Chiamiov]

It'd be a lot easier to have two separate machines.  Or, even better, have some sort of load-balancing solution that directs traffic over whichever line it thinks will work better.  I don't really know anything about this, though.

[_Jitsu_]

As far as i know there is much easier way to do such thing.
You can essentialy force windows to change the network card binding order... or maybe network ADAPTERS to be specific, because it will work also if you you're using the same card for both thing (even though it's physically the same device, you get two network bindings.)

1)Open up your network connections.

2) Find the menu bar. If there is none, hit ALT, it should show up.

3) Advanced tab -> Advanced Settings

4) First tab, first group box. Move up your MOST PREFERED connection (probably ethernet via cable) up to the top.

5) There, done. All incoming/outgoing connections WILL be using that binding as a favorite setting, however...

There is one more thing to that. Since the way it's handled, you cannot set application specific binding... but... you can most probably make windows think that the first one is unavaible.
I have few things on my mind. You can try basically forcing apps to block the first one, to do that:

1) You can try binding to static IP, as the previous user mentioned
2) Using IPv4 OR v6 EXCLUSIVE for some apps, and turning them off for specific connections. That is for example - your ethernet bind only works with v6 and wireless with v4. That way you can set some apps to use ONLY the one you want.
3) Change your router setting to disallow connections from specific apps like torrent. Hopefully there is a way for you to distinguish one from another if they're going through the same router.
4) You can try limiting the app from using the said connections by some 3rd party applications. NetLimiter2 would be my best bet.

Honestly i'm at blank right now, since i didn't ever try to do such thing, except for my nix-based router, but connection preference wasn't really my intention there. Oh right... maybe you can set your ROUTER to favor one or another protocol - try going through the config - especially the QoS (or Quality of Service if it's not an abberv.)

Hope it helped a lil bit.

[Pentium100]

Setting connection priorities won't make uT use the other connection.

You still need to go to uT Options->Preferences>Advanced and set net.bind_ip and net.outgoing_ip to the IP address of the connection you want uTto use. If that connection has a dynamic IP, you will have to change the setting every time your IP changes, torrents won't work until you do it.

If your "torrent" connection has a dynamic IP the best way to do it is using a virtual (or real) machine for each connection. VMware server was free the last time I checked and it works quite well.

(I assume you use Windows XP or 2003; Instructions are based on VMWare server version 1)

The way you do it is like this:

(click to show/hide)

1.After installing VMWare server, go to Start->All Programs->VMware->VMware server->Manage Virtual networks
2.Go to Automatic Bridging and uncheck the checkbox "Automatically bridge an available physical network adapter to VMNet0". Apply
3.Now go to Host Virtual Adapters, delete all of them except one. Apply.
4.Go to DHCP and NAT, stop the services and remove DHCP subnets. Apply.
5.Now go to Host Virtual Adapters and make it look kinda like this:


Note, in my case, Fujitsu Siemens card would be the "torrent" card. You can have bridged that to whatever VMNet you want, also make sure you have a "VMware Network Adapter" bridged to some other VMnet.

6.OK.

Now we have this: VMnet0 - "torrent" connection; VMnet8 - "VMware Network Adapter". If it's different for you, just change the numbers when I mention them.

7. Now you want to make sure that the host OS does not use the "torrent" connection. Go to Network Connections, right click on that connection ->properties and uncheck all items in the list except "VMware Bridge Protocol"


8.Go to the properties of VMWare Network Adapter VMnet8" and give it an IP address so that it does not conflict with existing subnets (I'll use 192.168.6.1, subnet mask 255.255.255.0) and no Default Gateway or DNS IPs.

Network setup finished.

9. Now start the VMware Server Console, File ->New->Virtual Machine
10. Next.
11. Custom config. Next.
12. I assume you will be using Windows XP, so select "Microsoft Windows" and choose Windows XP (home or pro) from the drop down menu. Next.
13.If you want, you can make up a name for your virtual machine, also set where the virtual machine files wil be located (that drive needs to have at least 5GB free space).
14.This you can leave checked or uncheck. If checked, only your user will be able to access the machine. If unchecked, you will be able to make the machine start automatically when you start the physical computer. Next.
15.This is where you can set it. If you unchecked the checkbox in step 14, you can give the machine to "Local system account" and you will have the option to automatically start and shutdown the virtual machine when you turn your computer on and off respectively. Next.
16.Unless you have a very fast internet connection and a slow multicore CPU, one CPU will be enough. Next.
17.You should allocate at least 512MB RAM, though this depends on how much RAM you actually have. uT can work with 256MB as well. Next.
18.Choose "Do not use a network connection at this time". Next.
19.Just leave SCSI adapter as BusLogic. Next.
20.Create a new virtual disk. Next. IDE. Next.
21.Size - set 5-8GB, depending on how much free space you have, check "Allocate all disk space now". If the file system on the hard drive is FAT32, check "Split disk into 2GB files". Next.
22.You can leave the name as is. The file will be created where you chose the location for your virtual machine. Next.

The virtual machine is created, now we have to add two network cards for it.

23.Click "Edit virtual machine settings". You'll get something like this, but without the network cards:


24.Click Add... Next.
25.Ethernet Adapter. Next.
26.Custom - select VMnet0 from the list. Check "Connect at power on". Finish.

27. Repeat steps 24-26, but this time choose VMnet8.

Now you have a virtual machine with two network cards and a network like this:


28. Now, mount Windows install CD (or its image) as the CD drive of the virtual machine and install Windows there.
29. Install VMware tools on the virtual machine (VM->Install VMware Tools).
30. Share a hard drive on your host OS where you keep the files that you download/seed (let's say the name is BitTorrent).
31. In the guest OS, configure the VMnet8 network card to have IP address 192.168.6.254, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, no gateway or DNS. Configure the VMnet0 network card as you would your real "torrent" connection. If it has dynamic IP, most likely it is DHCP ("Obtain IP automatically).
32. Connect to your shared hard drive on \\192.168.6.1\BitTorrent, map it as, say, Z:.
33. Copy uTorrent to the guest OS and start it.

Now, anything that you run in the guest Os will use the "torrent" connection. Anything you run on the host OS will use the "normal" connection.