Is there any advantage or disadvantage to having two internet connections open simultaneously?

You can aggregate bandwidth, but it is not terribly straightforward. If you are interested I’ll try to find you the link.

I don’t particularly care or need to aggregate my bandwidth. I was just curious as to what is happening underneath all the bits and bytes, is all… Are both connections being used simulataneously to whatever tiny benefit the dial-up adds on top of the RoadRunner?

When you asked the question “is my internet speed the sum of the two connections” you were asking “Is my bandwidth aggregated”? and the answer is, no. But you can change it so that it is.

Okay, thanks for the clarification? But if not, why are both connections accumulating bytes sent and received? And how do I change it so that it is aggregated? Just curious…

By the way, congratulations on getting 20K lurve!

Hold on. I will try to find you the article.

http://www.michaelbrumm.com/how-to-aggregate-bandwidth.html

Thanks! That’s interesting, but not of any practical use ot me because I use XP on my “personal” computer, and Ubuntu 9.10 on my “serious” computer. Though I suppose it’s likely that what’s possible on FreeBSD is also possible on Ubuntu

Yeah, I’m sure it is.

The only benefit that I see for having to internet connection is that you have a back-up internet in case one of your lines goes on and off. But it does not have to be two DSL connections. You can have a DSL connection as your main line and a prepaid pocket wifi as your back-up to save on service fees.