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[Dray]

No it doesn't matter. It's not really speed as such, it's bandwidth.

[Bowdon]

I'm confused about this thread 

I thought 'load balancing' was just balancing bandwidth between 2 connections, so your speed doesn't go up, it just makes your connection more stable and run more smoothly?

As for line bonding, I didn't think line bonding was available for fibre connections? Yet I've seen a couple of people on the forum post speedtest showing over 100Mb/s downloads, S.Stephenson in this thread, and Ignitionnet in another thread. How is this being done?

[S.Stephenson]

The load balancer allows certain things that support it to utilise both lines at the same time.

Otherwise say you are using 100mbps total on 6 devices the balancer will try to make both lines use 50mbps that is what it means by balancing.

Bonding requires an isp to support it or some complex hardware.

[burakkucat]

As I understand it --

• Load balancing is performed by the end user -- equipment is only required at the EU's end of the circuits.
• Line bonding requires co-operation between the ISP/CP and the end user -- equipment is required at both ends of the circuits.

[Bowdon]

The load balancer allows certain things that support it to utilise both lines at the same time.

Thanks for the reply mate.

I understand that part. But I dont understand why the download and upload speed suddenly doubles on speed tests. I've just watched a guy set a load balancing router up and his speeds appear to double. He was using adsl connections on load balancing and went from download 15Mbps upload 2Mbps to download 30Mbps and upload 4Mbps.

This might be an obvious question, but does that mean his new download speed is really 30Mbps?

I thought load balancing was if you have 2 x 60Mb FTTC lines then if you load balanced the lines you'd still be only be able to download a max of what you would get with 1 line just more efficiently.

I thought line bonding would double your download speeds.

I guess I'm asking, I currently sync at 63Mb. If I was to buy another fttc line and also synced at 63Mb too would my download speed double?

[Weaver]

> If I was to buy another fttc line and also synced at 63Mb too would my download speed double?

Mine does.

[d2d4j]

Hi weaver

I thought you were fully bonded and not load balanced

On load balanced, you should be able to achieve same speedtest result using just 1 dsl connection, by connecting 2 LAN into load balanced, if seperate load balancer used, on single device with load balance capability, it's a little harder to use 1 dsl line

It does not mean your speed has doubled, as you are just using 1 dsl line, so it cannot, it just means it multi threaded on the speedtest

I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but we have being doing load balancing and fully bonded for a long time, I could even grab a screen capture of a VPN bonded line on upto 6 broadband lines, showing which packets use which lines, and all lines are variant speeds to each other, from different providers including  3G dongles

If you want to see screen capture, it'll be a week or two as I need to call at the clients to make it

Many thanks

John

[Dray]

But I dont understand why the download and upload speed suddenly doubles on speed tests. I've just watched a guy set a load balancing router up and his speeds appear to double. He was using adsl connections on load balancing and went from download 15Mbps upload 2Mbps to download 30Mbps and upload 4Mbps.

This might be an obvious question, but does that mean his new download speed is really 30Mbps?

I thought load balancing was if you have 2 x 60Mb FTTC lines then if you load balanced the lines you'd still be only be able to download a max of what you would get with 1 line just more efficiently.

I thought line bonding would double your download speeds.

I guess I'm asking, I currently sync at 63Mb. If I was to buy another fttc line and also synced at 63Mb too would my download speed double?

Yes.

Does it help to think that what you are increasing is the bandwidth rather than the speed? This means you can get more data down the line in the same time.

I prefer to think of traffic on a motorway - everyone travels at the same speed of 70mph but if you double the number of lanes from 3 to 6 you can get twice as many vehicles through in the same amount of time.

[Chunkers]

Due to my horrible net connection I am also looking at aggregating two lines and am very tempted by this box of tricks from TP-Link which seems very cheap and gets rave reviews generally, probably not as good as the one mentioned above but only £71 and probably good enough for me!

You appear to be able to mix up to 4 different ISP's / different types of connections (ADSL, VDSL, 4G etc).

To my surprise it can also aggregate both connections so you can experience the full bandwidth of both lines when downloading without getting a more expensive bonded connection, I didn't think you could do this without bonded connections  - appears I was wrong.

Worth considering?

Chunks

[iMx]

You'd have to do policy based routing to maintain state and pin some connections, perhaps HTTPS and other secure connections, to one specific line/IP address - if the line/IP goes down, it can be reassigned but potentially breaking the session, similar to if your dynamic IP changed on a regular DSL line.  Otherwise, you will likely find websites log you out when the IP changes, potentially some e-commerce orders being blocked due to the IP change.

I do bonding over 2 lines, which aggregates both up and down, but requires a box in the DC. Similar to the Firebrick setup, but without the Firebrick, using OpenBSD.  I get about 82-83% (slowest line, x2, 80% ish of that).  With access to both ends means I can control the QoS up/down without flooding the line.  I had a slight digression on another topic:

http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,17674.0.html

[skyeci]

As I started the post and been reading the responses I am still unclear as to wether 2 load balanced vdsl lines using something like the er-5120 in a home setup will be of any advantage?, i understand the bandwidth should increase but are the usual home internet type programs able to take advantage of this sort of set up? E.g. kids gaming on pc's and consoles at the same time etc..

Seems to be a mixed response as to wether a load balanced 2 line setup will actually increase performance unless I have not understood it correctly
Many thanks for any clarification

[Dray]

As you will have more bandwidth you will be able to do more things at once. But are you currently having slowdowns caused by a lack of bandwidth? Perhaps QOS would be a cheaper solution.

[iMx]

Seems to be a mixed response as to wether a load balanced 2 line setup will actually increase performance unless I have not understood it correctly
Many thanks for any clarification

Some things yes, somethings no, depends on the application/service. 

Running speedtest.net, yes, it will show you around twice the bandwidth.  But for others, if you have 2 lines, then for arguments sake 2 people could download at 60M on 2 lines, rather than 30M each on 1, but 1 person on their own may still only be able to download at 60M over 1 line.

[Dray]

That's only because you have to use an app that uses multithreading to utilise more than 1 line - Turbo Download Manager for example.

[Chunkers]

I watched this video on Youtube and the guy demonstrates the performance of a load balancer - this might help to understand

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDUfP8a5zNY[/youtube]

He gets double the bandwidth and does a test from about 4 minutes onwards .....

I found it interesting

Chunks