Two internet connection question

[Guthrie]

For the second time in a month I've had two sets of SnGs wiped out by an internet outage, so it's time to get some backup.

I have a separate PC for poker, and it and my main PC are connected to a router which puts them both on the net and networks them together. I have cable internet service at 4M down and 512K up, which is probably overkill already since I don't download lots of music or video or other big files, although I do surf the net on one PC while playing poker on the other.

I'm think about downgrading my cable service to a lower speed, and getting the cheap DSL at 1.5/256, then running one PC off each service. This would actually cost the same as what I'm paying now. I want to keep the two PCs networked, however, for auto backup every night.

I can get a combo firewall/modem from the phone company for DSL.

Should I get a second ethernet card for one PC to connect to the DSL modem, and leave the other ethernet connection to the existing router? Would that keep the two PCs networked? Or is there a more elegant solution?

I would then run the poker PC off one connection and manually switch to the other in case of an outage. I don't really need automatic cutover, failover, or whatever it's called, as long as I can just close the poker client, log off the broken connection, log on the other service, and start over.