Running 2 ISP's on one line - is it possible?

[howardb]

Maybe I'm being a thicky here, but here goes...

I currently have a 512/256 Telkom ADSL line at home, and want to upgrade to a 4096/512 one.
My current ISP subscription is also 512/256 fibre, uncapped & unshaped with their own router/modem setup.

My question is: if I keep my current ISP subscription/modem and upgrade my Telkom line to 4096, can I hook up another modem with a new 4096 subscription and run both modems and subscriptions on the same line?

i.e.:
- one Telkom 4096 line running:
- 512 fibre on one modem
- 4096 normal shaped on another modem
-- both at the same time

Not sure if this makes sense?

 

[Vaporized]

You cannot use two seperate modems on one line, you can however connect too two seperate Isp's using one modem. You need to set your router to bridge mode, then create a pppoe dialup in windows for each of your accounts. If you want both accounts to be active at the same time it becomes a little more tricky. You would have to setup static routes so windows can route the traffic along one of the two active connections. At home i have built two seperate Ipcop firewalls which each dial a seperate account. This allows me to change the gateway in windows based on which connection i currently need. If you have more than one computer connecting to the internet this also make's it alot easier. Give me a little more info on exactly what you want to do.

 

[hoegh]

im pretty sure you can't have 2 modems running on 1 line(there is a thread some where stating this) its a complicated technical thing that I dont understand , but in a nut shell its not possible....now that I think of it...here's a good example of why it wont work, both modems will be using the "same frequency" on the phone line to send and receive data, kinda like using 4 walkie-talkies all on the same radio frequency and you try and have a conversation with one person and everything gets all screwed up cause eveyone can hear whats being said, ie. the modems wouldn't know who's doing what and it would just become a mess(somebody with knowledge of this please feel free to step in and point out the flaws in my overly simplistic summary)....

 

[marine1]

2 modems? Dont think so but 2 accounts? Yes

 

[howardb]

Thanks for the replies - I will have to see if I can get the ISP to give me the modem password so I can setup up another ISP account...

The reason for asking this was that I have a contract account with the ISP for the 512k fiber account (4 fixed IP's, unshaped, uncapped) which I use mostly for the small business side, but would like a bit more speed now for personal use - unfortunately, I'm not able to afford their 1024k fibre, uncapped, unshaped package they offer, which is currently listed at R3648.00 per month (incl VAT) - I have been very happy with the lower international latency of the fibre account, and I've had no downtime at all since switching to this, so it makes sense to retain this for the small business side.

My idea was to run both modems concurrently, one for the business and the other for private - this obviously cannot be done, so I will try and see if the ISP will allow bridge settings for a private account.