US Telco Support > CenturyLink > alternative to Sharedband

alternative to Sharedband

You can always buy a dual-WAN router and aggregate your own connections. That's all Sharedband is doing, except they pipe the connections to a proprietary VPN and pipe the result back to you. I'm not an expert on the dual-WAN routers but I know several companies make them. They aren't cheap like standard consumer routers but would absolutely do the job. Most folks buy them to have a backup connection in case their main line goes out but they can also aggregrate multiple high-speed lines.

As for CenturyLink, you can buy all the DSL connections you want as long as you can pay for them. I know many people with multiple lines not necessarily aggregating them but otherwise having several DSL connections to the same property.

load balancing routers dont acutally take two 1.5 lines and give you 3mbps they just balance the load between the two lines. i need something that will combine the two lines or more to give me the total speed.

reply to bkwyatt98
Just because you can get a bunch of CL 1.5 Mbps DSL lines, it does not mean that you will be able to get that bandwidth on all of them at the same time.

Since the max you can get is 1.5 Mbps, its highly likely that your remote terminal that feeds your area is not fibre fed and is fed by several T1s.

This is because CL oversells the remote terminals which feed a lot of people.

You might get 2.6 Mbps at 3am, but at 6pm you might only get a total of 0.5 Mbps. These are numbers using Sharedband. The problem is not with Sharedband, the problem is with Centurylink.
From experience.

i do agree with what you say we are fed by copper. but i have one 1.5 and my speeds never go below 1.2. im trying to not get sharedband becuase thats extra bills. but i think that might be the only way to do it without isp support.

well i called cl and ordered a third line they are doing it free of charge i am going to just bond two together for now and see how that goes. i should get around 2.95 mbps.

reply to bkwyatt98
Actually, there are a number of dual-WAN routers which do BOTH bandwidth aggregation AND load balancing, either or both. I have a friend that uses one but he's not aggregating just using it to have a wireless backup in case his main broadband goes down. They aren't cheap as I said, typically start at around $200 and go up quickly from there. Sharedband is merely automating the process with a click and go option for less technically inclined folks.

reply to bkwyatt98
You have to use MLPPP to bond DSL lines from your ISP together.

Sharedband I believe uses a specific VPN bonding system to achieve the bond. I could be wrong though...

If your ISP supports MLPPP then yes you get the speed of all connection combined. One IP one WAN from multiple connections.

I have MLPPP and have two 1.5/896 connections at my office. I get 2.8/1.5 speeds consistently with speed tests.

reply to bkwyatt98
bkwyatt98- How are you doing it? Is CL supporting MLPPP now or some other method?

They said they do not support bonding by mlppp so I either have to use sharedband or find a dual wan router that will combine them. Can anyone give me a good brand to look at I'm not wanting to spend any more than a 1000

is this their (CL) bonded service?

Or just a second DSL line?

i am just ordering another line. and planning on using sharedband to bond them but if there is another way to do it i am open to suggestions

would something like this work for what im trying to do. »www.linkloadbalancing.com/

You aren't looking for a load balancing solution, you are trying to combine more than one line for higher throughput. To do this, you would need to use MLPPP which CenturyLink won't support in your area. A service like Sharedband is what you would nee to use. Sharedband isn't exactly a load balancing solution. All your traffic will route through a Sharedband VPN server and the data is split and sent to you via both lines and then combined back at your hardware. Sharedband or a similar service is what you need to achieve a faster connection in terms of throughput.

so i am going to get sharedband they way it is setup is one modem connects to each router and then you connect both routers okay from there i want to connect there routers to my main asus rt n 16 because it is far more powerful for my network does anyone know if i can like bridge there routers to where my asus is doing all the work just like i have my one modem bridged now.

i was looking around and found this »shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.307···ory=-102

From what i read it will do exactly what sharedband does it will combine everything

well let me ask you this on my 1.5 connection when watching a movie and say someone else is on the internet it makes the movie buffer so would a load balanced router solve this by connecting two 1.5 lines

right that would make sense. if i was to get the sharedband do you know if there is a way to bridge their routers to my main home router. I dont want to use theirs as my main one because i need gigabit Lan connections and they just use the linksys wrt54g.