 tobyTroy Mcclure
join:2001-11-13
 ·OlyPen, Inc.
·CenturyLink
| Sharedband -> Qwest mini-Review I got Sharedband this week and a 2nd Qwest DSL line.
Sharedband perform a kind of bonding of any type of internet connection, in my case two DSL lines. But they can combine DSL and cable,FioS,Wireless, or anything.
I have interleaving turned off on both DSL lines, both having a speed of 1.5Mbps Down /896Kbps Up.
My setup includes 2 DSL modems and 2 WRT54G routers flashed with their specific firmware, one connected to each line, then both Lan1 ports connected. Connected my PC to Lan4 of router 1, will be replacing this connection with another router and forwarding all the ports down. The routers work together and put all the packets in the correct order after they have been sent down two different lines, it works well.
I flashed their firmware onto 2 WRT54G routers I had, but they will sell you pre-setup WRT54GL, or D-Link routers for faster connections.
I still have Qwest as the ISP for both lines, I wanted to do that, keeping it simple if anything changes down the road.
They give you a single static IP, 250 GB (soft cap), $25 per month, includes two lines in the pro plan.
You can get more if you want to pay more, the business plan, but that would include unlimited data. Looks like they use »www.bandcon.com/ for the content delivery system.
example of the status screen
The attached jpeg shows an example of the status screens, all very detailed.
Give them a try, I was VERY surprised at how well it works.
»us.sharedband.com/
If I can get all my port forwarding worked out using their virtual combined router, and its reliable, its a keeper. All websites are so much faster . . . it feels weird.
Netflix and Youtube videos are now watchable. 
Total monthly costs for 3MBps/1.8Mbps for me is $35 DSL1 (includes POTs discount) + $40 DSL2 (dry, first 6 months 10 less) + $25 Shareband, = $100.
Could be better, but unlikely to ever get any better with rural Qwest.
I looked into a real DSL bonding company, it would cost twice as much. Maybe CenturyLink will sell bonded DSL when they come into town. Any questions, let me know. |
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| that is interesting, thanks for sharing that |
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| reply to toby
Sounds like too much hardware. And why pay sharedband for something you can do on your own with software? You could have went with pfsense or clearos on one machine with 3 nics. I have a mini itx w/ a 3 gig E daughter board, one goes to qwest vdsl , one goes to cox cable, one goes to my switch. I also have verizon wireless and cricket USB devices I connected and use if all else fails.
I setup load balancing and some other firewall rules. I can get about 70mbps down when cox and qwest are not tapped out during peak usage. |
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tobyTroy Mcclure
join:2001-11-13 Reviews:
·OlyPen, Inc.
·CenturyLink
| said by nickphx:Sounds like too much hardware. And why pay sharedband for something you can do on your own with software? You could have went with pfsense or clearos on one machine with 3 nics.
Yep, it is a lot of hardware, the number of power bricks is a pain.
No, this can not be done with pfsense. I have used pfsense to load balance. Another short coming of pfsense is that it can not be used on the same ISP that use the same gateway, you have to put a router in the middle of one of the connections.
Sharedband is not load balancing, it is bonding. It creates a single stream of data, where load balancing would create two streams.
A single stream is needed for Netflix/Youtube/AmazonVOD, etc |
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tobyTroy Mcclure
join:2001-11-13 Reviews:
·OlyPen, Inc.
·CenturyLink
| reply to toby
Data logging Via Router |
Now I can watch videos, like this one. "http://vimeo.com/17207873"
Vimeo is great.
This jpg shows the speed while watching this video, after I connected the LAN output of the 1st Sharedband router to another router.
Using a Netgear WNR3500L running the TomatoUSB (»tomatousb.org/) firmware.
I forwarded all data to the WAN input of this router from the virtual router, so I can control all port forwarding easily now and use a static DHCP table.
The only extra step I had to do was set the MTU to 1464 in the router. |
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| reply to toby
said by toby:Total monthly costs for 3MBps/1.8Mbps for me is $35 DSL1 (includes POTs discount) + $40 DSL2 (dry, first 6 months 10 less) + $25 Shareband, = $100.
Could be better, but unlikely to ever get any better with rural Qwest.
This is the part that cracks me up. You're willing to pay an extra $65 a month (more than doubling your prior monthly expense) to double your speeds to a whopping 3MB! I might be willing to do the same (and I suspect there are many more like us). But to do that, we have to go through a third party company who needs to tie up another pair of Qwest's wires (and thereby increase sources of failure in the connection) and cobble together some bonding scheme. But Qwest will never see the revenue opportunities presented by such users. |
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tobyTroy Mcclure
join:2001-11-13 | yep I know.  |
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