internet services - i'm curious

[Skaperen]

i'm curious ... how many members and other people you know have internet service from TWO or more internet providers.

[EuclideanCoffee]

I get Internet from my phone company and my ISP, Internet Service Provider.

[SeijiSensei]

Smartphones provide a second Internet channel for millions of people. My service permits the phone to be used as a wifi access point. It's come in handy a few times when my main service had an outage.

[him610]

Smartphones provide a second Internet channel

Yes, that is my situation also.

[TheFu]

i'm curious ... how many members and other people you know have internet service from TWO or more internet providers.

Pretty common. Home ISP and whatever cell data plan they have. Both will fail after 4-12 hrs during region-wide disasters. Heck, my cable ISP can't handle a 2 min power outage without needing to reboot their equipment. I have UPS equipment and handle 45+ min outages ... but the internet goes down.

More serious nerds or people with home businesses might get 2 business ISPs at home. I know about 10 people with a dual business ISP setup. They have the router setup to prefer 1, but failover to the other. Most of these guys work in telecom infrastruture and networking. The extra $150/month to not be disconnected is a minor business expense.

[Skaperen]

in that setup with a smartphone (or any other setup), can a desktop or laptop running some Ubuntu route one internet address/network through one ISP and route another internet address/network through the other ISP, concurrently?

what does it take to have a smartphone do that? an app? some routing/network commands? i'm assuming it uses the wifi hardware in the phone as an access point. if you do that with masquerading enabled can the phone company see that more than just the phone is using the internet?

[Shibblet]

Are you talking like home internet, and cell phone internet?

[Skaperen]

i'm talking about the kind of services referred to in posts #2 through #5 whether being used at home or in a small business or office.

[mastablasta]

work ISP
the company smartphone (different ISP)
home ISP

i don't own a smartphone myself, otherwise i might have 4 ISPs.

[Skaperen]

i'm interested in cases where 2 or more ISPs are in close enough proximity that a single computer can be connected to both of them by some means, such as distinct gateway routers on the LAN that computer is connected to, or separate wifi access points where support exists to use both at the same time as different logical interfaces over one wifi interface (the local wifi card would be channel or band flipping), or the like over ad-hoc, or possibly including tunnels, or multiple physical interfaces. as long as that computer can control which CIDR-identified subnets go through which ISP (possibly by remote routing commands/tables).