combining 2 DSL lines for faster download.

ingen

hi folks, am considering purchasing this device http://www.mushroomnetworks.com/product.aspx?product_id=1000

to give me faster DSL download speed, by combining 2 lines.

so for example if i have 2 DSL lines each capable of 5mb down 512kb up


then with this device i can get 10mb down but only 512kb up, as the combining of the 2 lines is only done my end. (ppp multilink)

does anyone know of any other type of router that will do the same, as the above router is from the usa. im sure a standard cisco router would do the same? ( if it had 2 adsl ports)


cheers

watty

Nothing will do it properly for a single session without ISP support at the other end.

That gadget just "aggregates" and load balances if you have multiple users or multiple sessions, unless the ISP "bonds" at their end too.

So unless your ISP supports you, you simply have 2x network connections, not one faster one.


It's called Modem/Channel/pair/DSL Bonding.

Do NOT buy any router for this without discussion with your ISP.

So which do you need?

1) Faster speed for a single application (Bonding)
OR
2) Aggregation / Load sharing to spread multiple sessions, applications, connections or users on the LAN (the equipment you link to).

A Cisco router can do #1 or #2, but #1 needs ISP support. It may even be possible (with ISP support) to do #1 using two ordinary DSL modems in "Bridge" mode and two "WAN" ports on Cisco or other professional router.

ingen

watty wrote: »

Nothing will do it properly for a single session without ISP support at the other end.

That gadget just "aggregates" and load balances if you have multiple users or multiple sessions, unless the ISP "bonds" at their end too.

So unless your ISP supports you, you simply have 2x network connections, not one faster one.


It's called Modem/Channel/pair/DSL Bonding.

Do NOT buy any router for this without discussion with your ISP.

So which do you need?

1) Faster speed for a single application (Bonding)
OR
2) Aggregation / Load sharing to spread multiple sessions, applications, connections or users on the LAN (the equipment you link to).

A Cisco router can do #1 or #2, but #1 needs ISP support. It may even be possible (with ISP support) to do #1 using two ordinary DSL modems in "Bridge" mode and two "WAN" ports on Cisco or other professional router.

quote from the truffle site

Aggregated downlink capacity in standalone mode - When not peered with another BBNA device, all HTTP downlink sessions use the aggregated bandwidth of the combined Internet access links, even in the case of a single HTTP session. For non-HTTP downlink sessions and all uplink sessions, BBNA6401 provides session-based intelligent load balancing across the access links in standalone mode.

so it seems with this device you can get the combined download only speed of the 2 lines!

also from the site.

For all other types of traffic intelligent load balancing will distribute the traffic on a session by session basis and therefore for a single non-http session or for a single upload session the speed will be limited to one of the DSL lines, i.e. 768Kbps.

so it appers that this product would be good for download traffic?

so it looks like you can use this product without support from ISP, and double your download bandwidth only by using 2 DSL lines

RangeR

eh... I'd probably side with watty on this one. Don't always believe the sales hype.

Knasher

Watty is correct, I would be extremely surprised if it worked for single session stuff without cooperation from your ISP or an upstream server to bond your connection. However for a lot of download protocols you often have the option to segment your download into multiple parts, this is mainly to allow you to resume downloads but most download managers use it to increase your download speed when hosts have placed an artificial limit on the download speed of each segment. In cases such as this you would be able to use load-balancing to increase your download speed, just as long as the host dosen't have anything in place to prevent this.

If you get a router that supports ddwrt (which can be gotten pretty cheep) you should be able to try something like this http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Dual-WAN_for_simple_round-robin_load_equalization. Never done it myself so I can't speak to its effectiveness.

ingen

here is more info they sent me

The TRUFFLE BBNA (Broadband Bonding Network Appliance), is a one-sided Internet bonding appliance that provides aggregated Internet connectivity for increased performance and reliability. With the TRUFFLE BBNA, multiple DSL, cable modem or T1 services can be combined to provide higher speed and more reliable Internet access.

Several load balancing devices are available on the market. Some of these were specifically designed to manage multiple Internet access links – these are called load balancers. The main distinction between any load balancing device and the TRUFFLE BBNA is that the TRUFFLE BBNA provides link bonding for HTTP-based data transfers in the downlink direction. With link bonding, the access links are effectively combined together into a single virtual pipe so that the data transfer rate of the virtual pipe is the sum of the data transfer rates of the access links that are being combined. Load balancing devices simply distribute load at the granularity of session.

The TRUFFLE BBNA combines multiple Internet access lines, each on a 10/100baseT Ethernet interface, into a single aggregated Internet access line. The aggregation over the Internet access lines is done even for a single session, providing the full aggregate speed. The TRUFFLE BBNA6401 supports aggregation of up to 6 Internet access lines and additional 2 cellular data cards. Internet access line can be a combination of DSL modem, cable modem, T1, satellite modem, fractional DS3, DS3, fiber, cellular or any other broadband connection from various carriers. Through the USB port, a cellular data card can be used to create an additional WAN connection. The cellular data card can also be configured for fail over only or always-on. In fail-over mode, in case of all the wired Internet access lines failing, the cellular data card will take over in less than 30 seconds

Our BBNA5201G aggregates the capacity of as many as five T-1, DSL, cable, fiber, or DS3 with optional cellular data card fail over and offers a maximum through put of 300Mb/sec. In addition to our standard cellular fail over the BBNA5201G incorporates bypass port fail over so in case of power outage BBNA5201G connects the primary WAN connection port to the primary LAN port to provide Internet connectivity. We have also added a hot-swap fail over feature to the 5201G series so an optional fail over unit can be installed to enable instant hot fail-over to a standby unit.

All of our BBNA appliances feature link failure recovery & link fail over so in case of Internet access line failures, the BBNA appliances keep the ongoing sessions alive by retransmitting the lost packets over the available access lines, even for HTTP sessions already in progress, without loss of data integrity. You may also add 2G/3G cellular cards as standby WAN access links for additional reliability.


Mushroom devices have 2 operational modes:

1) Standalone mode: In this mode, our bonding appliances will bond all http downlink traffic. As an example if you were to download a file behind the BBNA device which has 4 ADSL lines plugged in with 6Mbps speed each (could be different ISPs). Your download speed would be around 24Mbps even for that single file download. For all other traffic, our device will implement the "intelligent load-balancing" where the BBNA device will distribute the different Internet sessions, on various WAN links on a session by session basis. BBNA will keep the application semantics in tact, by making sure the sessions from certain applications are kept on the same WAN line, such as banking sites, where a blind load-balancing would break the application.

2) Peered mode: When a BBNA is peered with another BBNA device over the Internet (let's say a branch office and a headquarter office), the two units create a virtual leased line connection between them over the bonded pipe. In this mode downlink and uplink is bonded for all Internet traffic types.

In the peered mode, any BBNA may be configured to provide a data tunnel, similar to an MPLS set up, to another BBNA device. Multiple tunnels may also be established within a single BBNA device, so that the device may communicate directly with multiple BBNA devices (Headquarters to multiple branch offices). For each tunnel, one BBNA device is configured as the "client" and the other BBNA device as configured as the "server" for that tunnel. An IP subnet is associated with each side of the tunnel and local traffic on the subnet that is destined for the remote subnet will be forwarded through the tunnel. A tunnel can also be configured in a “Capture-All" mode in which all traffic at the client BBNA is forwarded through the tunnel to the server BBNA, except for the traffic that is specifically destined for the designated subnet of the client BBNA.

In peered mode, the various features of stand-alone mode are still operational. In particular traffic that does not match the criteria for forwarding on the tunnel(s) is processed as it would be in stand-alone mode. This provides reliability in case a remote BBNA peer becomes non-operational.


interesting reading.

also you can peer to them without involvement of the ISP by peering to one of their devices for full functionality.

Knasher

If I had to guess, I'd say that they are sitting upstream and that all your HTTP traffic goes through their servers. Which is why they are so specific about it being HTTP traffic and downstream only, effectively they are proxying for you and splitting the response up among your connections. Which is fair enough, but probably not something that would appeal to you as you would probably be sending all your traffic through a proxy in the states (which would have a noticeable detrimental effect on your latency for http traffic). This also explains why it has a monthly cost instead of a once off thing.

What I don't understand is why they don't operate as a VPN service instead of just a proxy as this would allow them to bond for all traffic and in both directions. Harder to set up, but technically feasible. Still would have latency issues though.

ingen

ok more info here, all operations are done on layer 4 ( http traffic download bonded) so no isp intervention needed. all other sessions are loadbalanced using round robin.
this is how it works in standalone mode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25FgsFk33UM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjlqYoP-43M

watty

So it relies on a remote proxy. Big increase in latency, likelyhood of contention, likelyhood of charging.

Sorry, but this is a rubbish solution. There ARE isps that can provide true bonded DSL at exchange, which is the only totally transparent and reliable way to double speed on DSL.

As a previous poster said you can do basic aggregation / load sharing with no remote proxies etc, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Clarke Connect, Linux. At simplest level a dedicated Linux based router (3 ethernet pots needed) and two standard DSL Modems in bridge mode.

If you really want single double speed sessions, and in various protocols, forget doing it without ISP support.

ingen

watty wrote: »

So it relies on a remote proxy. Big increase in latency, likelyhood of contention, likelyhood of charging.

Sorry, but this is a rubbish solution. There ARE isps that can provide true bonded DSL at exchange, which is the only totally transparent and reliable way to double speed on DSL.

As a previous poster said you can do basic aggregation / load sharing with no remote proxies etc, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Clarke Connect, Linux. At simplest level a dedicated Linux based router (3 ethernet pots needed) and two standard DSL Modems in bridge mode.

If you really want single double speed sessions, and in various protocols, forget doing it without ISP support.

hi Watty there is no remote proxy involved at all.

the device in standalone mode does the packet management, at layer 4 on the device, using network calculus. sorta like if you had a cisco box with 5 serial 2mb lines attached you get 10 mb ( assuming BGP etc is used)


im bit sceptical about the mushroom box, but it appears to do the trick..

however to test it out you have to get one, and a second dsl line too!
so could be an expensive test.

they are sorting out an iteractive demo for me, so will see it in actiion then.

watty

If there is NOTHING remote, it's a waste of money. It will only aggregate. You can do that even with your PC and a 2nd ethernet card and 2nd DSL modem if you are running linux.

An old PIII with three network cards and clarke connect (free Router /Firewall solution for x86 based on CentOS Linux) and two DSL modems in Bridge will do exactly the same.

Or add 2 x USB ethernet adaptors, + built in Ethernet + Built in WiFi and two DSL modems in bridge (two lines needed) on a €250 netbook or all-in-one Atom box with Linux or Clark Connect.

If you really need 2x speed for one person, the Mushroom box or ANY aggregation scheme is useless, you need Bonding (ISP support).

You havn't explained your application? Or did you?

ingen

watty wrote: »

If there is NOTHING remote, it's a waste of money. It will only aggregate. You can do that even with your PC and a 2nd ethernet card and 2nd DSL modem if you are running linux.

An old PIII with three network cards and clarke connect (free Router /Firewall solution for x86 based on CentOS Linux) and two DSL modems in Bridge will do exactly the same.

Or add 2 x USB ethernet adaptors, + built in Ethernet + Built in WiFi and two DSL modems in bridge (two lines needed) on a €250 netbook or all-in-one Atom box with Linux or Clark Connect.

If you really need 2x speed for one person, the Mushroom box or ANY aggregation scheme is useless, you need Bonding (ISP support).

You havn't explained your application? Or did you?

hi yea in post 1#..

basicaly, as i cannot get a line faster than 5mb, i want to get more than one line, and some how get the full download ( or near enough full ) download speed from 2 dsl lines.. eg downloading a large file few gig file, using both lines to download.. thats my requirement... without ISP intervention, as eircom dont do it, and vodafone dont, the magnet business one is crazy money..

clarkconnect looks good,

just saw this on magnet business site

Fibre to the Office

20Mb/2Mb
ONLY €160 per month,
plus get FREE installation.
Save over €800!

Cryos

Ok so let me get this straight...

You want the speed but wont pay the €160 per month.

So lets do the math.

2x Lines will cost you somewhere in the region of €50 for line rental (May be installation costs?)
2x upto 7mb Broadband packages will cost you around €80 (based on stand alone pack)
so thats €130 for "10mb" internet based on your logic of using an intermediary device to try attain this speed.

Yet, spend an extra 30 more and get double the speed and performance...

Honestly, if the speed means that much and your willing to go buy a second line and expensive equipment why not just take the plunge and give magnet a call and see if you can get it.

ingen

Cryos wrote: »

Ok so let me get this straight...



You want the speed but wont pay the €160 per month.

So lets do the math.

2x Lines will cost you somewhere in the region of €50 for line rental (May be installation costs?)
2x upto 7mb Broadband packages will cost you around €80 (based on stand alone pack)
so thats €130 for "10mb" internet based on your logic of using an intermediary device to try attain this speed.

Yet, spend an extra 30 more and get double the speed and performance...

Honestly, if the speed means that much and your willing to go buy a second line and expensive equipment why not just take the plunge and give magnet a call and see if you can get it.

you got it arseways actually,
ha read my previous posts, if only i could get the fiber service i would happily pay 250 per month!! read my previous posts too, i am even considering dedicated sych microwave too..

i cannot get fiber, from magnet, or anyone else for €160. i called them its not available!!

i was quoted €7k for a fiber connection from eircom, ( stipulating that i must be close to the ring ) and then €21,000 per year rental.

due to the length of the eircom phone lines in my area , the best speed a phone line can take is 5Mb, hence me querying some other way of bonding 2 DSL lines!! if anyone else has any ideas on how i can get better speed im open to suggestions.

Cryos

ingen wrote: »

you got it arseways actually,
ha read my previous posts, if only i could get the fiber service i would happily pay 250 per month!! read my previous posts too, i am even considering dedicated sych microwave too..

i cannot get fiber, from magnet, or anyone else for €160. i called them its not available!!

i was quoted €7k for a fiber connection from eircom, ( stipulating that i must be close to the ring ) and then €21,000 per year rental.

due to the length of the eircom phone lines in my area , the best speed a phone line can take is 5Mb, hence me querying some other way of bonding 2 DSL lines!! if anyone else has any ideas on how i can get better speed im open to suggestions.

Actually, if you read back you didnt state you couldnt get the magnet option. You implied that you couldnt get a faster speed than 5mb which insinuates over your copper line

Whats the usage case for this type of scenario ? Are you attempting to run a business off the line or something ?

There is some figures going around on DSL Reports for those devices and people talk about getting them cheap at $1000~, also concidering these guys have been around a few years there is bearly any information about them; If it was such a revolutionary product every tom dick and harry would be writing reviews on it...

watty

That Mushroom box won't do anything that can't be done with Linux and < €200 of HW plus 2 vanilla modems in Bridge. It won't do real bonding, only aggregation /load balancing

If there is no LLU/Glump operator (Magnet, Digiweb/Smart) and eircom won't supply bonded DSL, then all you can do is aggregation.

ingen

watty wrote: »

That Mushroom box won't do anything that can't be done with Linux and < €200 of HW plus 2 vanilla modems in Bridge. It won't do real bonding, only aggregation /load balancing

If there is no LLU/Glump operator (Magnet, Digiweb/Smart) and eircom won't supply bonded DSL, then all you can do is aggregation.

hi watty, so with aggregation say if im using a unix box or clarke connect, or something along those lines, and downloading a file that is 9gb in size,
how does the download flow work?

cheers

watty

It depends on download protocol and the source site.

You might still only get 5Mbps rather than 10Mbps. If the source supports multiple parallel sessions for same file, then the load is shared, two sessions are created on the two connections.

As I said earlier, really you want bonded connections and then the remote site only sees a single connection as your two connections are made back to a single one at the ISP, alternate packets then can go on alternate connections.

If you have no ISP bonding, then most of the time you only see an advantage if you download two different files at the same time. (x 2 speed)..

I update web sites and the FTP manager can transfer 20 files at once. That then would benefit from aggregation (even 5 DSL lines!).

But if you wanted to stream 6Mbps HD video, aggregation of 2 x 5Mbps won't work. It would let you stream two videos though < 5Mbps. If you have ISP supported bonding then it's "really" a 10Mbps connection, though latency may increase by the (speed/ packet size) * number of channels/lines bonded.

UPC achieves > 25Mbps by Cable Channel bonding. The Cable Modem on DOCSIS 3 actually can use up to 5 regular channels, which on old long cable DOCSIS 1.1 and DOCSIS 2.0, each might have been shared by several users. So they have to break up the cable into shorter bit fed by fibre to have the Same overall speed shared to fewer users, hence 120Mbps instead of 1Mbps to 3Mbps.

Again it's impossible with ONLY muliple modems and no matter how clever the box at customer end is. The "bonding" needs Hardware and Software at ISP end and User end. It can definately be done on DSL, but only by the ISP, just as on Cable the Operator has to install new infrastructure before they can supply a "channel bonding modem" (DOCSIS 3.0).


I suspect with two ordinary DSL lines and anything at your end the best you can do is download more than one file at the same time. Load balancing / Aggregation will do that. Some sites might work with a download manager and download a single file faster, but I'd not hold my breath.

Do all sites max out your 5Mbps? many Sites don't download much faster than 3Mbps! (I've had 25Mbps BB and currently have 8 package)
Typical busy hour(s) speed

I may get virtually full 8Mbps from linux distros at heanet.ie but often 3Mbps from USA sites

Manchester


NY, NewYork


Seattle, USA North West


Rome


So, the further away, the less likelihood of even exceeding 5Mbps

Are you sure your file source(s) can go much faster than 5Mbps or support multiple connections per file?

ingen

Are you sure your file source(s) can go much faster than 5Mbps or support multiple connections per file?

yes when my line was set to 5120/512 with eircom i consistantly got 4.3mb download speed from sites in AZ and Chicago.

so my line was maxed out downloading. i was told it could go higher but the bottle neck was my DSL connection. servers far end support multiple download sessions.

[URL="[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/853071026.png[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]

[URL="[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/853075273.png[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]

i have just started a download now after doing the test, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz:(:(:(:( my line is currently set at 3mb with voda

watty

Maybe also you should consider changing to Digiweb or eircom.

There seems to be a lot of negative comments on vodafone DSL, also they ate Perlico, which wasn't a great ISP.

ingen

watty wrote: »

Maybe also you should consider changing to Digiweb or eircom.

There seems to be a lot of negative comments on vodafone DSL, also they ate Perlico, which wasn't a great ISP.

have already last night decided to go back to eircom, as youtube videos on vodafone DSL keep pausing midway through , sometimes there are big delays in loading pages.. also its impossible to get to speak to someone in vodafone who knows the processes involved..in upgrading lines.. also vodafone promise you everything but just dont deliver.

eircom are expensive, but i have always found their support to be good.

i have ordered a second line from eircom too, so lets hoping its better than the one i have currently.

zsa

Hey guys,

I've been looking into broadband bonding and purchasing a mushroom box myself. I came upon this thread while researching them and I am surprised by the doubt expressed here. I had a co-worker check out a demo of their product and he said it was impressive. Has anyone else used one of these boxes? Results?

Thanks

Cuddlesworth

zsa wrote: »

Hey guys,

I've been looking into broadband bonding and purchasing a mushroom box myself. I came upon this thread while researching them and I am surprised by the doubt expressed here. I had a co-worker check out a demo of their product and he said it was impressive. Has anyone else used one of these boxes? Results?

Thanks

The doubts are justified. You only have control of your connection past the DSL modem. The fundamental concepts of networking go against what they claim their product does.

zeris

Their product running in standalone mode claims to only "bond" http traffic and only for the download. Is it just doing HTTP/1.1 range requests?