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92 Comments
- NippleNutz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+29Apparently the serious bandwidth is no match for a partial digg. DiggMirror didnt even get it.
- PhoneJack, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15http://www.automatedhome.co.uk.nyud.net:8080/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1729
- ASoggyWaffle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10i always wanted to do this but with various neighbors' wireless internet connections hehe
- hansmast, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14ADSL doesn't have much upstream bandwidth even if you bonded three of them.
- FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Bollocks. Some people actually work from home you *****. Not only that but he's trying to increase UPSTREAM ... read the ***** article.
- eightysix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6http://tetro.net/misc/multilink.html
- jramos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@sillygates
FTFA: "The router boots and runs from CD ROM or a write-protected USB pen drive, increasing security. ***In my case, my old main board didn't support booting from USB pen drive*** so I used a hybrid solution of a boot loader from CD which then hands over to the main o/s held on the pen drive." - tingle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8The site isn't hosted by that guy
- joe18, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5In mauritius, 1mbps cost U$200... :(
- tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yea... that's why people get cable modems.... for illegal activities. I'm on the right side of the law... meaning 28.8kb for me!
(/sarcasm) - FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11
You appear to have failed to realise the obvious. The person who wrote the article on that doesn't actually run the site that it was posted on. In other words the site is not hosted using this method. - id000001, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Artical copied from site:
ubmission by Paul Gale
In the desire to increase my upstream speeds as much as possible I did some research into ADSL bonding or MLPPP (Multi Link Pont to Point Protocol). A handful of ISP’s offer support for this (they tend to be smaller companies though rather than the likes of BT, Yahoo etc). After a fair bit of hunting around and talking to people, I plumped for 3 x ADSL Max Premium (Office) connections from a reseller, UKFSN (www.ukfsn.org), of an ISP called Enta Net (www.enta.net). UKFSN is a one man band but crucially, all support is direct from Enta Net who in my experience have a fairly good level of manning. They tend to answer the phone reasonably quickly although email support can be a bit slow. Enta Net won’t deal directly with small businesses and home users, which is why a reseller comes into the equation. Enta will deal direct if you want a Cisco managed bonded router solution though but this is a fair bit more expensive.
Each of the three lines would provide me with up to 8Mbps downstream and 832Kbps upstream (the home or standard product gives 448Kbps upstream). The Premium or Office product supposedly gives higher priority to your traffic in BT’s network along with the higher upstream speeds. Contention ratios are no longer used to differentiate the products on BT’s IPStream network that Max uses. Each of these lines would be bonded together using MLPPP – both at the ISP and at my end using a Linux based self-built PC router and using free software from FreeStuffJunction (www.freestuffjunction.co.uk/bondedcd.shtml). Each connection is plugged into a Sangoma S518 PCI ADSL modem (one for each connection), costing £112 each...
The router boots and runs from CD ROM or a write-protected USB pen drive, increasing security. In my case, my old main board didn’t support booting from USB pen drive so I used a hybrid solution of a boot loader from CD which then hands over to the main o/s held on the pen drive. Configuration files for the connections and services such as IPTables, the Linux firewall etc are held on a second pen drive. The router software is fully featured and supports IPSec VPN, NAT, Firewall, Squid proxy cache, traffic shaping, DHCP, Snort intrusion detection and SNMP amongst others.
Setup and configuration of the router was really simple. The whole package is supplied as an .ISO image and you simply have to set a few configuration options which take the form of a number of text files (Just the existence of the file sets the option in most cases). Once up and running, the router is managed by a modified version of Webmin, the Linux web based admin system. In-depth knowledge of linux is not needed unless you really want to get ‘under the hood’. Once all lines have been brought up and bonded, there are a number of reporting and information options available from Webmin. The software also runs a script, checking on the status of the lines and re-bonding if one should fail. So far, over the couple of months the router has been running, I’ve not had any problems. Support from the developer and fellow users is available free via a forum and an expensive premium rate phone number if you can’t wait for a reply via the forum.
The router works on any old 486 and up PC you might have lying around. You need to ensure it has enough PCI slots to accommodate the PCI ADSL cards though. The router also supports bonded SDSL but requires a different card type for this.
So what was I expecting from this solution? The maximum theoretical downstream rate in my case is 24Mbps and upstream 2.5Mbps (approx). Of course, this is the sync speed – data throughput rates will be less due to IP overheads etc.
To get the three ADSL lines into my office, I had to migrate one existing 2Mbps service from Eclipse, convert a Home Highway line to analogue and get a third analogue line installed – quite a job – and, you guessed it, none of it went smoothly! Most problems were caused by BT failures or problems, both with their ordering systems and various other technical problems, including not having enough lines available in my road. These problems overall took a couple of months to resolve.
Being a reasonably early adopter of ADSL Max, I also suffered from a number of different ‘teething’ problems. One such problem was caused by the BT network setting all three of my connections to the old 2Mbps throughput rate although the sync speeds were good at 8Mbps. This took a few weeks for support to find out what was going on and resolve. Another problem was caused by the sync rate of one of my lines being set to 6-6.5Mbps due to an earlier line fault during the initial 10 day period (It’s actually the target SNR ratio that’s set – the modem then sets the best speed it can with this SNR target figure). Apparently a BT insider says that the DSLAM (the piece of equipment in the exchange that links many ADSL subscribers to a single high speed ATM line) will eventually set this rate higher but will take several weeks or more to do so (the actual figures and details on how this happens have not been made public as the whole process is going through the patent process apparently). I finally managed to get BT, through Enta support, to manually set this target SNR back to what it should be (lower is better in this case – well, at least to enable high speed syncs) – the line has been syncing at 8Mbps happily since :) It really does pay to keep pushing a resistant support person when you KNOW there’s still a problem!
So anyway, after all these problems, I now have a working ADSL Max MLPP bonded solution – but how’s the performance?
Well, upstream (and my original reason to install this lot was to increase this), I’m getting a steady 2Mbps (250KBps ish) – excellent – just what I wanted so I can upload large files via FTP for my customers quickly :)
Downstream is a different matter though and a little disappointing. I get anywhere from 3 to 6.5Mbps depending on the time of day. I’ve tested the throughput of individual lines as well as the 3 line MLPP bond. Sometimes, the 3 line bond performs at the same speed as a single line and at other times, it’s slightly higher – but never as high as I might have hoped for. This is still work-in-progress and I’m continuing to talk to Enta support and the reseller (UKFSN) to see if we can find out why the performance isn’t as expected, still, I’m very happy with the upstream performance which was my main reason for doing this and downstream isn’t exactly slow!
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Note: these figures are actual THROUGHPUT data rates and were measured regularly by a number of methods including the ADSL Guide speed test and real world FTP transfers to several hosted web sites.
So how about costs?
Well, the rough breakdown is as follows:
Monthly:
3 x analogue BT line rental - £11 per line per month (not sure yet if the second and third are charged at £12 or not) + VAT?
3 x Office Max ADSL Max lines (45Gb peak cap each and 300Gb each off-peak) - £25 per month + VAT
Initial Outlay:
Migration of existing line – free
Conversion of Home Highway to Analogue - £50 (IIRC) + VAT?
New line - £99 + VAT?
PC to run router – free (as it was an old machine)
3 x Sangoma S518 ADSL PCI cards - £112 each (no VAT) – includes licence for the bonded router software.
128Mb USB pen drive with write protect switch - £30 (ish)
Note: that although the bonded router software is free, you need a licence for each ADSL PCI card you want to use with it. It is also available from other sources for free but may be an older version. The software is based on GPL software with a high level of customisation/scripts etc.
As I was previously paying £65 + VAT per month for a 2Mbps connection and a fair bit for a Home Highway line, implementing this solution hasn’t cost me a great deal more per month (if you take up front costs out), especially as I’ve gained so much more performance wise.
I hope this has been useful – overall, if you need as much upstream bandwidth as possible, I’d recommend this solution. It’s not for the faint of heart though as there are potentially many problems to be encountered. Hopefully, many of these will not occur though as ADSL Max becomes a more robust and understood product.
Paul Gale can be contacted on - adsl at siliconpixel dot com - mattridings, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Unless I've been seriously mistaken all these years 'bonding' is not the same as 'load balancing'. So the links to items like the Linksys aren't really relevant as well.
Load balancing will indeed make a *network* with multiple PC's operate faster as the overall *aggregate bandwidth* available is increased....to the individual pc user however they will typically only be routed via a single isp connection at any point in
time and therefore never realize more than a single isp link can provide. In situations with equipment that does try and spread your individual pc bandwidth across multiple wan links you can usually guarantee a host of http and https issues since many/most sites manage their sessions via a combination of cookies and IP addresses. If setup correctly it should be possible to increase certain types of traffic though, usenet downloads if your nntp server provider will authenticate sessions across IP's, and torrents possibly. Inbound load balancing is even more picky about that 1:1 ratio and certainly more complicated for the software/hardware routing algorithms. So yes you'll be able to handle more user connections...but each connections speed will likely not be spread across multiple links.
Bonding on the other hand will typically require that the ISP on the other end of the line is working in cooperation with your equipment to acheive a truly multiplexed line. The IP presented to the outside world however is a single IP in this case which the ISP then distributes across your links.
Any setup that claims to do otherwise is going to be fraught with issues for web activity.
-matt - ewhac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I did a little investigation on this a few months ago, trying to find a way to get better bandwidth to my home. As an earlier poster pointed out, there is a distinction between "bonding" and "load balancing." The dugg article describes bonding, which makes a number of links appear as a single IP pipe. Of the two, bonding is the preferred solution, since the bandwidth increase is completely transparent at the IP layer.
Bonding multiple ADSL links requires support at the DSLAM end, usually in the form of MLPPP (multi-link point-to-point protocol). MLPPP support is apparently quite prevalent in the UK (where the dugg article is hosted), but virtually non-existent in the USA. So the described technique, in general, won't work in America.
Schwab - bvaughn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6http://www.automatedhome.co.uk.nyud.net:8080/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1729?coral-no-redirect
- Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Only is your exchange is LLU or you have a cable service that supports that - most of the country can't. What upstream do you get with that 24Mbps?
- Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The machine I'm using is a PIII - can't remember the speed - just the nearest one I had lying around that had PCI sockets :)
The 486 part of the spec was taken directly from the site of the guy who wrote the router software (well, put it together with all the scripting and mods etc). I have no knowledge of whether a 486 would would work well with 8Mbps connections or not. The bonded router software was originally designed to run with 2Mbps connections I believe. I know that a few people are running 4 and more 2Mbps connections :) - jwolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4And it doesn't even work that well... FTFA:
"Downstream is a different matter though and a little disappointing. I get anywhere from 3 to 6.5Mbps depending on the time of day. I’ve tested the throughput of individual lines as well as the 3 line MLPP bond. Sometimes, the 3 line bond performs at the same speed as a single line and at other times, it’s slightly higher – but never as high as I might have hoped for. This is still work-in-progress and I’m continuing to talk to Enta support and the reseller (UKFSN) to see if we can find out why the performance isn’t as expected, still, I’m very happy with the upstream performance which was my main reason for doing this and downstream isn’t exactly slow!" - Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As previously mentioned - my article was submitted to a third party site which has no connection with me whatsoever i.e. It's not mine and I don't host it ;)
- sillygates, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8I have never seen a 486 motherboad with onboard USB. Anyway, why not make this a WRT router :) ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-WRT - harri2097, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3ADSL's throughput can be horrendous though, so it's no surprise his results waver like that. Half of the UK's telephone network is in a complete and utter state, largely unmappable and ADSL performance is largely dependent on your distance from the exchange, and how many other people near you are subscribing to the same service.
- FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2
oh look.. here's the key ...
"..here in Norway now.."
He's not in Norway, he can't get that. Not only that but you insist on ignoring the fact that he's improving his upstream capability. Did you bother reading it? - FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2
Exactly where can you get upstream speeds like that? If you read the article the who point is to increase upstream speed not downstream. - Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What you fail to understand is that companies like UK online are only offering this service in a few exchanges across the country (those that will provide the most return on investment for them) - my exchange doesn't support this - and as it's a really small exchange, will be fairly low down the list to get it.
- Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's right - Automated Home isn't my site and I have no connection apart from reading it - It's a great site :)
- spxiii, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The RV016 has some reported issues with SSL connections because it tries to bounce the connection between different lines, thus breaking the encryption. Hopefully this isn't the case here.
- Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Maybe in Norway - but not in the UK - The whole point is to increase Upstream speed NOW - not some time in the future.
- Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's right Streak - upstream is working really well - 2Mbps but down is still work in progress - only getting speeds as good as a single good 8Mbps connection.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I doubt a 486 can handle the routing and bonding of 3 8Mb connections running over 3 PCI cards on what is likely an old-revision PCI bus w/o bus mastering. He says he uses an old comp, and I really hope its at least a PCI 2.1 compliant late pentium or pII class.
If you think about it, a 486 might have around 30MB/sec memory bandwidth. This is hardly more than the data its trying to process, before the immense overhead involved... - harri2097, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Because most providers offer high downstream, but often only a quarter of that or less in upstream. For instance, on the 2mbit connection I'm on now, I only get 256kbits up. The article's goal is not to increase downstream but, as so many other commenters have er, commented, to increase upstream.
- Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I should have made it clear in the article (I didn't expect it to end up on Digg.com!) - this is a UK solution and no other faster alternatives exist at my exchange i.e. no LLU suppliers and no cable access etc (like the majority of the UK). As I mentioned in the article, upstream speeds are great but downstream is still slow compared to what I would expect (but I'm still working on that!).
- petard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have thought about it too... It would help my bittorrent greatly! Its just I do not want to spend the money on good antennas, and wireless cards.
- kurtkraut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31mbps costs U$39 per month in Brazil for instance. The world is not UK :D
- Digizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1FFS - read the comments!!! The site that hosts this article ISN'T on the bonded connection.
- CatfishJones, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6I should explain a few things about the Internet. Let's start from the beginning. Early civilizations had no concept of zero... you know what? Fsck it, whatever. Sure, he's hosting his site out of his house and its three dynamic IP ADSL lines and it is indeed ironic that said lines can't handle 100,000 simultaneous users.
- Chaos, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Also possible to do something similar not using MLPPP with another ISP, Andrews & Arnold
- jbond, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What are the chances of doing this between households where you all have wifi? Picture 5 houses all with wifi. 3 of them have broadband. The connections are aggregated so that all 5 have internet access and peak speeds are 3 times the slowest broadband. Then there's the resilience if it's split across ISPs. I've wanted to do this stuff since Wifi has been around but the state of mesh networking and bonding hasn't allowed it. I figure there's mileage in condos and terrace houses doing this as a community project if the hardware can get cheap enough.
- streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't believe the load balancing of the Linksys is the same thing as bonding. For example (if I understand the situation correctly), with load balancing, the fastest achievable download speed will be limited by speed of the fastest individual Internet connection, whereas with bonding the maximum download speed will be governed by the sum of the speeds of all Internet connections.
From the upload and download speeds the fellow reports, my guess is he is experiencing bonding on uploads but not with downloads. - henryaj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I really was only trying to be informative. How much broadband costs in Mauritius is utterly irrelevant because the guy is in the UK.
- NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -11/+12Wow, that died fast.
You sure you should trust this guy's networking tips? - whiteanvil, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2this reminds me of the old dial up days and multiplexing two phone lines to get as close to 100k connection as possible
- whitty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the problem is that you live in europe. In the US, we get internet service that you would liken to dialup. It is really cruddy and a half over hear. Now, if I lived in Germany, I could get 1 gig down and like 10mb+ up or something like that at consumer pricing. Instead, I pay $45 a month for 4.x down and 350kbps up - it's virtually unworkable for running services.
- timta2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Distance from the CO and quality of the line go hand in hand according to my phone company, but then again maybe you know more than they do :)
- gedw99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0here in Sweden its standard to 8MB both ways. That's over cable, and costs about 25 ponds / month
You can also get 24 both ways, and that's about 45 / month.
i moved here only recently and the network here is very impressive. - bearsk1n, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I know this is an old thread, but....
In Western Washington a company called Worldlink has recently started offering Bonded DSL as a legitimate offering. up to 28Mbps with an SLA! finally an affordable alternative to a slow ass T-1.
http://www.w-link.com/bondeddsl.php - hypercrypt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1http://www.upodcast.be/mirror/
- malin2008, on 11/15/2008, -0/+022MPS is unheard of for 22.oo a month U.S. i wish they would do that here.
Im sure in the cities with fiber running through the basements of most af all of the highrises and factories to the curb you could get a good deal but 22 a month i dont think so. - malin2008, on 11/15/2008, -0/+0Bonding DSL is still a work in progress ,im sure some of the big boys are working on new solutions but its not going to happen unless your living in an area equipt with fiber and able to recieve att uverse etc. its just a huge undertaking and as far as load balancing goes , what it does it it will balance the load between multiple isp's. including dsl,cable,satellite etc. dpending on how many ports are available on your load balancer this also allows for complete redundancy. If your dsl goes out it will fall over to the cable or sat. or whatever broadband connection you have connected to your load balancer.
Qos is also verry important if your running a wireless isp or plan on it because i use quality of service programs implimented in my base station to make all voip phone calls priority over my network and i cheat by usine a broadband dsl provider which provides me with 10M of broadband speed and im using 4 modems for a number of people all incorporated into my load balancer so all of my customers are always directed to the fastest connection to the internet.
Another trick i use is my provider does not like spam, if my server is blacklisted because of excessive spam from some dirt ball it could take me a month to clear it up so i added an additional broadband connection to my load balancer with some piece of ***** sat. company and ive directed all email traffic through this broadband supplier incase of spam issues so if im blackballed i can redirect my emails to a new line ,find the culprit bann them from my service and work on resolving the issue.
(by the way,ive found that securing your system via mac authenticating provides your service with percise oversite of your network making it a breeze to catch foes using your network for foul play)
If you use mac auth. and your operating on a public ip you can cut their service from vacation in europe if your operation is in the states.
NOT LOAD BALANCERS DO NOT INCREASE BANDWIDTH THEY JUST MAKE AVAILABLE BANDWITH MORE ACCESABLE TO YOUR EMPLOYERS OR IF YOUR RUNNING A DATA CENTER WITH MULTIPLE SERVERS IT WILL BALANCE THE LOAD BETWEEN SERVERS TO MAKE YOUR EXTREAMLY HUGE AND PROFITABLE WEBSITE ACCESABLE TO USERS :) - malin2008, on 11/15/2008, -0/+0I pay 39.99 for 6M in the states through att and 100.00 a month for 6M through my wholesale broadband provider which I'm using to operate my wireless isp.
I have 4 modems so I'm paying 400 dollars a month but its worth it with their total freedom user agreement which allows me to sell broadband services to my customers unlike the large tel cos.
I'm getting 6M service though for 100.00 a month which is a hell of a lot better then paying 4-500.00 a month for t-1 connections and I'm totally redundant, I'm using 4 6M dsl modems to provide my customers with service on a load balancer with 1 cable Internet port (hush hush) in case of outage and 1 sat port which is a rip off just for a bit of added security.
(like to send emails via Q.O.S. through cable and sat. - LoadBond, on 02/11/2008, -0/+0Its defnitely possible to bond ISP connections without MLPPP. MLPPP restricts bonded adsl or any bonded internet solution. A hardware that our company uses is from http://www.xrio.com - we've combined 3 different isp connections which uses something other than MLPPP - this includes cable and 2 adsl connections. these are from 3 different ISPs which is great for any ISP failures. Not worth having a bonded solution just with one ISP. Plus the download and upload speeds are great. worth a look for those that want more than bandwidth speed. this offers failover and QoS and load balancing too which can be used with bonding.
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