Having both DSL and wireless connection on, how to know which?

Sometimes when my Internet connection via DSL is really slow (shared connection), I turn on the wireless. So the computer has both DSL/ethernet and the wireless on. How can I know through which it is connected to the internet? (btw, it doesn't seem to help the speed with both on)

 

Um, your wireless is connected to your DSL, is it not? If so, you're on the same connection either way, so it won't make a difference (unless your wireless signal is low, then it's going to be worse...)
Or are you talking about a WWAN?

 

Why do you say my wireless is connected to the DSL? The DSL is wired connection. If I unplug the ethernet cable, then my computer will only have wireless connection, and not be using the DSL at all. OTOH, if I plug in the ethernet cable (dsl), but turn off the wireless connection, then I'll be using only the DSL (wired connection). What I'm wondering is, what if I have both wireless and the the ethernet (DSL) connected? How can I know through which my computer is actually connected to the Internet?

 

What are you connecting to when you connect wirelessly?
Is it a card from Verizon or similar that lets you get internet anywhere?
If yes: WWAN. Then yes, it's separate.
If no: Then are you connecting to a local network, like your router?
If yes: That's still your DSL connection, you're just connecting to the modem through wireless, through the router.
If no: Interesting, you have magical internet.

 

For wireless, I use my wireless (atheros) to find open networks in the neighborhood (I do this very rarely, just when there is problem with the dsl connection through router/ethernet cable).

So back to the original question: if I do both--plug in ethernet cable to the router, and turn on wireless (in which case, turning off either will not cut off the connection since the other is still connected)--in that case which one is actually used?

 

Operating system?

 

Why should it have to do with the OS? (It's XP pro.)

 

I would imagine you could tell by simply looking at your connection speed. Generally speaking, wired will most likely be faster than your wireless (at least it is for me with cable and my wireless router), so check your network connection transfer speeds and see which has the highest value.

Go to Speakeasy and run a separate upload/download benchmark of your wired and wireless connections. Then reconnect both, and run the same test again. Whichever throughput matches the numbers you recorded in the beginning should give you your answer.

I'm sure there are far more elegant ways of finding out for sure, but this is all I could think of at the moment.

 

Thanks. So whichever is faster will be picked up first and used henceforth? Would it switch between the two when the speeds of the two change so that they alternate to be the faster one?

 

If you're running with the default network handlers in XP-Pro, you're almost certainly causing the system to switch over from the wired/DSL adapter to the wireless adapter - if I recall correctly, XP is set up to give preference to the wireless over the wired connection.

 

Shyster, thanks. I didn't know that. Now I see why Hep! asked what OS it uses!

 

Yeah, I was beaten on the answer. Glad you got it sorted out, that is really all that matters.