2 NIC / 2 ISP / 1 PC

C

Caddish

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 1, 2009
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84
Hi

I currently am on cable which gives me consistent 60mbps /~10ms ping but with very low/expensive download cap, i'm thinking of getting another ISP which is much cheaper with barely 7mbps/~30mbps but unlimited download.

Basically what I want to do is redirect Newsbin Pro (software to download from usenet) traffic to the cheap ISP and leave all the rest to cable ISP

Is it possible ?
 
So you don't want a dual WAN router and you just want the dual NICs/WANs in the computer?
 
The software is going to use your default connection. Some software can be bound to a certain nic, but most is just going to use your default connection. Probably going to need to setup a virtual machine that only uses that connection or just get a second computer to only use that connection
 
You can do this by configuring your routing tables to route traffic to your newserver ip/range via the correct NIC. Shouldn't be too tricky
 
Yeah what ltickett said.

I actually have a client who has two connections

1) DSL which we use for remote access for a DVR
2) T1 - which is setup as a point to point with their monitoring facility in another town

The t1 has no internet access its just used for P2P use basically, they dont want internet access on the T1, and we use the DSL to login remotely and to feed an IP camera to the DVR.

So originally i set it up using two nics and did routing tables (you can do this from the command prompt)... eventually i just plugged both connections into a switch, that switch into my 1 nic which worked fine.

But anyway if you do the table, i forget exact command bt you have to tell it "hey you, if i access this usenet site, use THIS network card... for all others, use THAT network card"

I believe the command was

route add 8.8.8.8 mask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1

which would basically say "anytime you access 8.8.8.8 [googles dns] use the network card that has gateway 192.168.1.1

research the "route add" command and play with it
 
Thanks ltickett and Adam, I'll investigate the routing table, since all the data I want to reroute comes from the usenet provider it should not be too hard
 
I believe it all come from my usenet provider server but I haven't verified
 
I have this exact same setup, I run a VM in VMWare Workstation for all my downloading via my Unlimited ADSL connection, VMWare Workstation is configured to force all traffic via the NIC with the ADSL connection, and then I just added a persistent route in the routing table on my PC to ensure all traffic goes via the cable connection by default for all other traffic.
 
5loth, why not just disable tcp/ip on your unlimited nic in the host machine? Then your host has no access or knowledge of your unlimited connection, and the VM will be unaffected.

I used to do this with virtualbox and a 3g card, it would only assign 1 IP per connection (obviously), so i just disabled tcp/ip, and put the VM in bridge mode. Worked fine, since i was unable to successfully pass through the USB, something about virtual COM ports, but i digress.
 
Caddish said:
I believe it all come from my usenet provider server but I haven't verified
Click to expand...

ok, I haven't ever used usenet before, thought it was more on par with a P2P service than a static server where everything is housed. Only thing I have to go on is what IRC was like back in the day when I seen some people using it. thought it was similar to that. So yeah, if it is a set IP that it uses and that doesn't change then you can do like the others said and just assign a static route for that traffic to use the one card. otherwise you are going to want to have a second machine (either physical or virtual) to use with the unlimited connection to make things easier on yourself.
 
I belive the most solid way to do this if your going to be using newshosting like you listed above would be to use route maps on a cisco router.

So any traffic destined for the newshosting servers goes out the proper wan gateway.

By doing it this was all the fancy work is done by the cisco router and you only need a single network.

For that kind of bandwidth i would pick up a Cisco 3725 used on ebay.
Also will need an extra fast ethernet wic card.
 
Static routes will do it, but you'll need to add routes for every usenet server IP which can be a PITA.
 
adoch said:
5loth, why not just disable tcp/ip on your unlimited nic in the host machine? Then your host has no access or knowledge of your unlimited connection, and the VM will be unaffected.

I used to do this with virtualbox and a 3g card, it would only assign 1 IP per connection (obviously), so i just disabled tcp/ip, and put the VM in bridge mode. Worked fine, since i was unable to successfully pass through the USB, something about virtual COM ports, but i digress.
Click to expand...

Sorry I'm not much of a networking guru, but wouldn't TCP/IP still be required? The physical NIC still needs an IP address which it wouldn't have if I disabled TCP/IP would it?
 
Exavior said:
ok, I haven't ever used usenet before, thought it was more on par with a P2P service than a static server where everything is housed. Only thing I have to go on is what IRC was like back in the day when I seen some people using it. thought it was similar to that. So yeah, if it is a set IP that it uses and that doesn't change then you can do like the others said and just assign a static route for that traffic to use the one card. otherwise you are going to want to have a second machine (either physical or virtual) to use with the unlimited connection to make things easier on yourself.
Click to expand...

Usenet is pretty much the opposite of P2P. The stuff is hosted on their servers :)
 
ltickett said:
Usenet is pretty much the opposite of P2P. The stuff is hosted on their servers :)
Click to expand...

Like I said I never used it before. All I know about the service is that a lot of people here talk about how they use it to download pirated software and media so assumed that it was more p2p.
 
5loth said:
Sorry I'm not much of a networking guru, but wouldn't TCP/IP still be required? The physical NIC still needs an IP address which it wouldn't have if I disabled TCP/IP would it?
Click to expand...

Assuming I understand how you have it set up, the physical network card that you are assigning to your VM doesnt need an IP, or even TCP/IP. Just uncheck the tcp/ip box on the network card. Obviously don't uncheck it inside the VM.
 
No. You always need tcp/ip or else you can't connect to the internet. (Which runs entirely on tcp/ip)

The best way to do what you're asking is like this:

1. Figure out what ip your Usenet host works on. It might be a range of ips, but you need to know which ones. Connecting to it using the ip (versus the hostname like Usenet.megausenetservers.com or whatever) makes this solution more foolproof. It's important that you know all the ip addresses that they use, or else this whole setup may not work 100%.

2.you're goin to need quite a router for his, but not to fear. Pfsense is easy to setup and is free from pfsense.org. you'll need an old PC with 3 network cards to install it onto.

3. Set it up like normal (with one network card for wan and one for LAN) with your faster, non-unlimited internet connection.

4. Add the 3rd card as opt1. You should he able to check a box and enable the card. It will automatically be opt1. Plug the other connection into that card.

5. Once this is setup, you will now have a default route table that routes all traffic over the faster, non-unlimited connection. From here you can go to the route table (System --> Routing --> Routes) and say all traffic to these specific ips. Be careful to use the mask of 255.255.255.255, (which on pfSense is /32) because that specifies a single ip. The mask of 255.255.255.0, (which is /24) will specify only the first 3 octets. Using Adam's example, the network would be 8.8.8.x. The 4th octet can then be anything, and this means you actually changed the route for 256 ip addresses, 8.8.8.0 through 8.8.8.255.

6. Set up a firewall rule to block all traffic out on your WAN that goes over port 119 for TCP/UDP. And add a separate one for 563 TCP/UDP. Then move them to the top, just in case. I would double-check your settings in the Usenet client to make sure you have the right ports, but 119 is the default port for NNTP (Usenet), and 563 is the default port for NNTPS (Usenet with SSL/TLS)

This should work flawlessly, and NO usenet traffic will get over your more expensive connection if it's set up right, so you won't be hit with some outrageous overage.
 
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Tha_Bomb said:
No. You always need tcp/ip or else you can't connect to the internet. (Which runs entirely on tcp/ip)

.
Click to expand...

I think you are misunderstand what people are talking about here are you are very wrong. They are not talking about the OS that is connecting, they are talking about the host. If you have a machine (server, desktop...) that has virtual machines on it then you don't need TCP/IP on the host as it won't be connecting to the internet, only the VM will. My VM box has 8 nics, hypervisor can only use 1 of those, the other 7 have TCP/IP turned off. That way only the clients can use the NICs, they have TCP/IP enabled on them so that they can get to the DMZ, internal network, or outside the firewall completely without the base OS having to be on every single network itself, its only on the internal.

Same here for what they are telling him. You remove the TCP/IP from the second NIC for the base OS so that only the VM client has TCP/IP and is the only one using that connection for anything. if you have TPC/IP on both the client and base OS then both will grab an IP for that connection and both try to use it, which isn't what is wanted here. Or probably anytime that you have a VM setup with more than one NIC, use one for management and the others for the clients. No reason for the base OS to have multiple IPs on it for the hell os if just because you need to use the NIC for a client.
 
Oh. Thanks for the explanation. I didn't fully understand the setup. I suppose that would actually work quite well, and be easier to setup/manage than my solution. :eek: I didn't know you could have the NIC assigned to the Host and the VM OS. I always thought once the VM was using it, it was invisible (or disables) in the Host OS.

I've seen some bad advice on here, and I assumed this was more of it. (like the incomplete route command suggestion) :eek:
 
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