Sharedband Hits Seattle > There is more to it...

reply to wifi4milez

Re: There is more to it...

DSL#1  10.10.10.1  <----->    MLPPP agg (Shareband) 20.20.20.1
DSL#2  10.10.20.2  <----->    MLPPP agg (Shareband) 20.20.20.2
 
MLPPP Bundle 20.20.1.1 <--->    MLPPP Bundle 20.20.1.2
Where the MLPPP bundle is built from PPP tunnels across DSL#1 and DSL#2
MLPPP bundle uses Shareband IP space inside the tunnel, not your ISP's.
 

reply to espaeth
TekSavvy, a Canadian national ISP serving roughly 85% of the country's population (the four largest provinces), offers unofficial support for MLPPP on their PPPoE-based DSL connections.

Numerous people with the technical skills to set up a *nix box are enjoying connections their bonded DSL connections (currently bonding two 5mbit down 800kbit up DSL lines).

Their routers support either packet round-robin, or splitting the packets. Either way, the effect is the same; any given IP stream only sees one extra-phat tube, as TekSavvy's router re-combines things on their end.

So there you have it, 85% of the population of Canada (assuming they qualify for DSL service) can take advantage of this technology already, and without adding any extra latency that the colocated solution requires.

There's also nothing stopping a TekSavvy reseller from providing a customized ISP-managed solution. They could sell their customers two connections, two modems, and a router device, and only bill them once, handling the setup so the user didn't need to maintain a *nix box.

The reseller would need to provide a general *nix router (the WRT54G type don't usually support MLPPP), which would also need a script to reconnect the second link until it hit the same router as the first one (there are four routers), as they must both be on the same one. But it's doable.

reply to wifi4milez
wifi4miles,

I think you're stuck in a world of black and white - embrace the midtones.

The 'ISP side' can refer anything on the other side of the access portion of the broadband connection. ([CPE] - access - [ISP - Internet]) For the service to work, the aggregation servers can be anywhere on the public internet. The idea is that the closer the servers are to the ISPs network, the lower the latency, and the better the performance. Locating on a individual ISPs network is ideal, but not at all necessary, provided that suitable peering relationships are in place.

Hope this helps.

reply to Guspaz

As has been said earlier, there is one way to do it without ISP support; create two PPP tunnels to a remote box (operated by sharedband), and use mlppp. The downside is that you're adding extra latency to your connection, since your internet connection now effectively terminates at sharedband's box. Your public-facing IP would also now be a sharedband IP.

But as has been said, anybody can set this up themselves if they have a VPS/colo/dedi server somewhere.

It shouldn't be a problem. Any ISP that is a wholesaler of Bell Canada's DSL services (TekSavvy included) has about $9 to play with as far as bandwidth, equipment, staff, etc.

Bell charges $20.50 for the line, and $1300 for the GigE to connect the DSL clients to the ISP's network (this is not transit, just a connection to Bell's ATM network, IIRC). That leaves about $9 per customer to pay for everything else when you consider that TekSavvy charges $29.95 for their normal 5/800 service.

In that $9, TekSavvy is able to provide 200GB/mth of bandwidth (5mbit DSL), and cover all other expenses, and still turn a profit. I don't see why a company like Sharebond can't make a profit on $10 or $20 per customer, as their actual bandwidth costs would be lower due to average usage. TekSavvy has proven that you can act as an ISP on those kinds of margins, turn a profit, and still manage to become the highest rated DSL ISP in North America (by DSLR's rating) :P

That's the thing though, Bell wholesalers are responsible for maintaining their own connection. The $20.50 connection fee and $1300 GigE to Bell only gets the user's packets to the ISP (TekSavvy)'s network. From there, the ISP is responsible for getting the packets out to the internet at large.

They currently have six GigE lines to various providers (Cogent, Teleglobe, Internap, Peer1, etc) for that purpose.

My point was that if you eliminate the two Bell-related charges, and possibly some of the equipment costs required to connect to Bell, you're left with TekSavvy's $9 per month or so. Inside of that, they're able to cover all expenses and provide 200GB of actual IP transit. For $19 ($39.95 to customer, $19 is roughly left over after Bell takes their cut), they're able to provide unlimited services, targeted at users who use over 300GB per month (300-500 is probably typical).

If TekSavvy can make a profit, I fail to see why Shareband, with very similar costs once Bell is removed from the equation, couldn't do the same thing.