[SOLVED] Can I increase speed by connecting Wifi and Ethernet when my internet CAN go faster?

[Argus97]

So I have seen some posts about how "no, it's a limited amount of data coming into your house" such and such, but this is a little different of a situation. My ISP offers much higher tiers of speed, just practically tripling in price though. But, the speed I currently have is device centered. I've run a few tests on multiple devices downloading 10gb files alone and at the same time. It within the margin of error always finishes at the same time. Using devices on wifi and ethernet too, as my computer is plugged in through ethernet, as is my ps4, I had my phone on wifi and a laptop on wifi too. None of them got faster speeds by being the only ones on the network, and the speeds never dipped when the other devices used the network. Clearly it's throttled by device, so if I connect my computer through wifi and ethernet, theoretically I should be able to double the speed, right? How would I achieve something like that? Is there a setting in windows to use dual connections? If not is there a program I can use to merge the connection?

 

[SamirD]

You need to see what your max speed offered by your isp is. If you are not hitting that max, you will have enough headroom to have multiple things do multiple things online without any slowdown issues, and this is what you want. You may have a switch or router limitation otherwise keeping you from maxing out your connection speed.

For example, I have a 600/15 connection at one site. But if I have a 100Mbps switch, each device will appear to max out because it's only getting 100Mbps versus the full 600Mbps.

 

[Argus97]

You need to see what your max speed offered by your isp is. If you are not hitting that max, you will have enough headroom to have multiple things do multiple things online without any slowdown issues, and this is what you want. You may have a switch or router limitation otherwise keeping you from maxing out your connection speed.

For example, I have a 600/15 connection at one site. But if I have a 100Mbps switch, each device will appear to max out because it's only getting 100Mbps versus the full 600Mbps.

I've got more than enough headroom, as the max speed offered is 1 gigabit, and I'm using at most 10 megabytes, so roughly 100megabit. But each device is getting that 100megabit speed while other devices are being used. I maxed out the speed on 4 devices at the same time without any of them dropping, so there isn't a physical bottleneck, just a superimposed one for the router to only give each device that speed as a max.

I meant since each device gets that 100megabit speed, could I connect my computer via ethernet AND wifi to make the router think it's two devices and would then have 200megabit on that single device. I know the router is more than capable of outputting that easily as again, 4 devices each at the same time using 100megabit in a test showed it's by device. The test ran pulling 400megabit in total. My question is how do I make my computers network act like two devices, one through ethernet and one through wifi, even with possibly different ip addresses.

 

[bill001g]

Lets take the much simpler example of you have 2 ethernet ports in your machine and you want to use both.

To do this you need a special switch or router that supports port bonding. This is not something you commonly find on consumer grade switches. Problem is even if you get port bonding it does not actually increases the download speed of a single session. So something like speedtest would not increase. You might be able to download 2 different files at the same time and use both but single file download will not use both. The method for path selection is purely mathmatical and does not look at utilization so both session can go on the same link and the other is idle. Port bonding was designed to run on servers with many hundreds of clients accessing them which the RNG will cause the multiple paths to load balance.

A new problem that mulitple paths create is the one of packet out of order. This is why the standard form of ethernet port bonding does not put the same session on different paths. You could for example transfer 10 150byte packets in the time it takes to tranmit 1 1500byte packet. This causes packets to get out of order which is interpreted by the end machine as data loss and causes data retransmission and in some cases it will terminate the session.

Now all this is moot in your case. There is no method defined that will "bond" a wifi session and ethernet session. In the end I can't see how your ethernet port is not as fast if not faster than your internet connection.

 

[Nemesia]

How is this 100 megabits limit applied? You have a 1 gigabits connection entering the house and what is actually limiting that to 100 megabits to each device?

 

[Argus97]

How is this 100 megabits limit applied? You have a 1 gigabits connection entering the house and what is actually limiting that to 100 megabits to each device?

It's applied by the ISP and I have no control over it. So while I have a gigabit entering the house, the ISP throttles the connection per device depending on the tier you purchase, with you only able to get the highest speed by either buying the "bundle" of TV and phone, which is just, no. Or paying a ridiculously higher amount of money to try to act like the bundle price is a good deal.

 

[bill001g]

This makes no sense. How can the ISP see your devices. If you have a router all your devices appear to come from the same IP address.

 

[player0]

Interesting. Do each device get dedicated IP then? No sense at all, can you check again? Which router do you use, can you access config? How they count your devices - possible but on level of ISP it is resources consuming for multiple users and it is question is it legal to sniff your traffic...

... None of them got faster speeds by being the only ones on the network, and the speeds never dipped when the other devices used the network. ...

This is interesting part, WiFi vs. Cable. I only once seen really gigabit ( slightly less ) capable WiFi access point.

 

[Argus97]

Interesting. Do each device get dedicated IP then? No sense at all, can you check again? Which router do you use, can you access config? How they count your devices - possible but on level of ISP it is resources consuming for multiple users and it is question is it legal to sniff your traffic...





This is interesting part, WiFi vs. Cable. I only once seen really gigabit ( slightly less ) capable WiFi access point.

My router from my ISP can't even be directly accessed by the normal 192.168.1.1 typing that in takes you to the website of my ISP and into a webpage where you configure router settings. The webpage sees every device connected to the router and I don't even need to be on the network to make configurations to it, as I can also just log into the website and access the router anywhere. It's absolutely fishy and feels questionable legally, but they are literally the only ISP I have to choose from, so yaaay. I included a picture, censoring anything that could be private info.

 

[bill001g]

So what you are saying is you can have 10 devices and each can run 100mbps at the same time but if you only have 1 device you can only use 100mbps total.

Very very strange rules if that is the case.

If you were running linux you could actaually run multiple IP addresses on the same machine. Then you could set it so different programs use different IP addresses. So it would almost be stupid for a ISP to try to limit you when you can get creative and do things like that.

If you really want to do this you can get a small dual nic PC and run it as a router. It will be messy but you can with special NAT and ARP configuration make it appears as if you have mulitple machine connected and then hook your windows machine behind it.

I suppose you could buy a number of inexpensive routers and put those between your PC and the ISP router. You would then have to setup the routing in windows so different traffic used different routers.

.............Still I can't believe a ISP would do this. Now if they were charging a seperate fee for each device then it might make sense.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Teaming NIC's does NOT increase speed, it increases bandwidth. They are not the same thing. And, all of your gear must support it.

 

[Argus97]

So what you are saying is you can have 10 devices and each can run 100mbps at the same time but if you only have 1 device you can only use 100mbps total.

Very very strange rules if that is the case.

If you were running linux you could actaually run multiple IP addresses on the same machine. Then you could set it so different programs use different IP addresses. So it would almost be stupid for a ISP to try to limit you when you can get creative and do things like that.

If you really want to do this you can get a small dual nic PC and run it as a router. It will be messy but you can with special NAT and ARP configuration make it appears as if you have mulitple machine connected and then hook your windows machine behind it.

I suppose you could buy a number of inexpensive routers and put those between your PC and the ISP router. You would then have to setup the routing in windows so different traffic used different routers.

.............Still I can't believe a ISP would do this. Now if they were charging a seperate fee for each device then it might make sense.

I assume it would scale to 10 devices, though I don't have that many I can use to saturate their speed. In the picture I included in the last reply, I can't even access my router directly, I have to access it through the ISP's website, and then they send the changes to the router. The most devices I've tried has been 4 though, but all 4 were able to fully utilize the 100 megabit speed at the same time. Most of the devices I have connected are smart appliances and I can't saturate the network with those. But from the multiple test I've done, I can download a game at full speed on ps4, download a file at full speed on my phone, a file at full speed on my laptop, and one at full speed on my desktop at the same time without them affecting each other. And it's just as fast as if I did them one at a time, going back to my initial hypothesis of if it saw my computer as 2 devices (Ethernet and Wifi) if it could trick the router into giving out twice the speed to that one device.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

....going back to my initial hypothesis of if it saw my computer as 2 devices (Ethernet and Wifi) if it could trick the router into giving out twice the speed to that one device.

No, that is not how it works. You can double the bandwidth (though doing this via Wireless is problematic at best) but NOT the speed. And, if using consumer grade equipment you won't see any benefit at all. NIC teaming requires some hefty (read expensive) business class switches.

 

[USAFRet]

going back to my initial hypothesis of if it saw my computer as 2 devices (Ethernet and Wifi) if it could trick the router into giving out twice the speed to that one device.

No.
At most, after a lot of weird configs and hassle, you might get 100mbps to Application A, and 100mbps to Application B. Maybe.
But you won't get 200mbps to Application A.

 

[player0]

@Argus97 Technically you can. It is not worth the money. Router/switch for this setup cost few k.
This setup is interesting first legally, but it also depends on your "signed" contract. How much do you pay for your "package"?
Top/bottom photo of router, please?

 

[SamirD]

I assume it would scale to 10 devices, though I don't have that many I can use to saturate their speed. In the picture I included in the last reply, I can't even access my router directly, I have to access it through the ISP's website, and then they send the changes to the router. The most devices I've tried has been 4 though, but all 4 were able to fully utilize the 100 megabit speed at the same time. Most of the devices I have connected are smart appliances and I can't saturate the network with those. But from the multiple test I've done, I can download a game at full speed on ps4, download a file at full speed on my phone, a file at full speed on my laptop, and one at full speed on my desktop at the same time without them affecting each other. And it's just as fast as if I did them one at a time, going back to my initial hypothesis of if it saw my computer as 2 devices (Ethernet and Wifi) if it could trick the router into giving out twice the speed to that one device.

Assuming your theory is correct, there is an easy way to get all the bandwidth you want--an enterprise router that supports multiple wan connections. You can configure these type of routers for a single lan and multiple wan connections where the router will automatically load balance and aggregate the wan connections. They're not cheap though.