Wireless Internet Adapter Question

[Painkillaz]

I always wondered...if you are on a laptop connected to the internet through the wireless card...if you also have a usb wifi adapter...would there be anyway to connect to 2 separate SSID's but use both connections at the same time to get a faster connection?

From my understanding that wouldn't work b/c im sure the usb connection would take over the onboard connection...and im sure it would create all kinds of havoc in regards to tcp/ip packets

the reason i am asking is b/c at my apt we get free wireless...and so far my max download speed has been 1.5 mbps...and thats rare...and the apt has different SSID's for different areas in the building. So i was thinking if I could get connected to 2 of them my internet would potentially be faster...

 

[Martimus]

The challenge, more often than not, is related to routing on the device. Most OS's have a routing table that they use to determine where to send packets of data. In each routing table you can have a default route defined. The default route is the device that you send data to when you don't know specifically where to send it.

Well you can only have one default (and preferred) route. Some devices, like Cisco routers, allow you to define routes with administrative distances. This allows you to have a second route available for load sharing. I've not seen this implemented on most desktop OS's.

If your OS and the device drivers allow, you could theoretically have two wireless adapters active simultaneously. What you'd likely see, however, is the second adapter simply over-writing the default route defined by your first adapter.