Possible to restrict application to single connection?

[andru]

Greetings,

I live on a university campus and have access to multiple ISP's. Over the college network, there is a great internal file sharing service which utilizes DC++. The problem is when I am transferring files over DC++, I cannot game and my college connection is fairly unresponsive.

I would like to setup my PC to use isolate DC++ to use only the wireless college network, while all other programs (games, browsers, etc) use the ISP which I subscribe to. This way I can still have a fast conneciton for gaming while still sharing files over the college network.

Does anyone know if this is possible to achieve (either natively within windows xp, or using some sort third-part app?)

Thanks in advance.

 

[nessus]

Remove the default gateway for your campus connection and add a persistent route statement to route traffic to your campus network address range over your college connection.

Traffic for your college goes ovr the college connection, everything else goes over whichever other network connection has an active default gateway.

 

[andru]

Thanks very much for the reply nessus.

I've done a bit of light googling on persistent routing, but am by no means an expert on complicated network commands. I wonder if perhaps there are any GUI applications or simplified guides that might help me getting it setup?

One other concern - if the college filesharing network detects a non-university IP, it rejects your connection. I've found that even having my LAN connection at the same time as my college wireless connection won't allow me to connect.

 

[nessus]

First, check your campus network connection policy and make ABSOLUTELY sure having a computer attached to both the campus network and another ISP at the same time is not a violation of security standards. If you are not sure, ASK! If I found somebody doing this on my corporate network without prior written authorization, I have the authority to turn off their network port, go to their manager and tell them that person is now looking for gainful employment elsewhere. And that person will never be back.

The best way to get all the info you need and get this working, if it is allowed by policy, would be to get in contact with tech support for your campus and tell them what you are trying to do.

Best case scenario is that they would give you a static IP address, or set up a DHCP reservation so that you could safely use one address assigned to your network interface statically without a default gateway entry, and they will tell you what routing statements you need.

If you are routed to a OS support type that responds back with basically "wth?" or "that's not possible", VERY politely ask if you can speak to network support person about it (Once again, only after you have verified being connected to two networks at the same time is not a violation of campus security policy). Network people are all about reducing the load on their networks for the most part, and will understand that what you are trying to do is possible.

Short of that, (once again assuming it is not a violation of security policy) it would take a bit of investigation to figure out the routes you need, and learning how to script netsh commands so that you lease an IP address on the network interface at computer startup, determine the settings, write the settings back to the network interface without the default gateway into the network settings after turning off DHCP (with a timer to do it again automatically at before the end of your DHCP lease so you don't cause an IP address conflict and really tick of the campus network support team).