O Canada! > Canadian > TekSavvy > [DSL] Basic question - Can MLPPP be applied with *ANY* ADSL line

reply to TSI Keith

Re: [DSL] Basic question - Can MLPPP be applied with *ANY* ADSL

Hi there,

You would need to have both lines through the same provider, and subscribe to a provider that supports MLPPP.

You would want the provider to raise the 4.5 Mbps line to a higher profile if it supports it. Honestly, if they can't, you are going to see only a marginal improvement.

Would you like any further clarification on this? If so, please ask and we would be happy to do so.

Take care,
TSI-Ashley

reply to ipanini
ipanini, you can use the two lines at the same time. For Windows, you just connect the two models to your computer and Windows will use either connection as it will. In Linux, there's a module that allows multiple network interfaces to be bonded and appear as a single virtual network interface called bonding.o for exactly that purpose.

Under the hood however, the two lines will operate independently from one another. Once a [TCP] connection is established, it will be established on one line and cannot hop from one line to the other. That's because each line will have a different IP address. When you send a packet out, the response will always come back on the same line. If you're watching a movie on Netflix for instance, you'll send a request to the Netflix server on one of the two lines saying "Please send me a movie". But the response, the whole ~700MB response, will have to came back the same line the request was sent on. There is no way to tell the server "Please send me half the packets on this IP and the other half on that other IP". At least not with TCP streams. There are however many file download protocols (ftp and http for instance) that can be accelerated on multiple-links using specialized software (Down Them All! extension in Firefox for instance).

To achieve what [I think] you want to do, you'd have to have a server sitting on the net somewhere that consolidates your two network connections into a single IP address and, conversely, splits any incoming traffic on the two lines. That's pretty much what MLPPP does for you.

reply to TSI Support1
Hi Ashley and JeanInNepean,

Thanks both for your answer.
Yes I would like to have further clarification on the subject.

Perhaps first some more detail:
I use OS X mostly and also Linux. (some Solaris too but only for zfs NAS) Of course also a couple of windoze boxes around.

I realize that a traffic request going out on mac address #1 will receive its reply on that same mac #1.
I'm not familiar with MLPPP, but perhaps it would be possible to say: send each 1 (first) package via mac#2 and send each 2nd and 3rd package via mac #2.

Your suggestion about protocols;
I use a lot of nzb and torrent stuff, so perhaps there I could gain some benefit.

At the moment I have a pfsense machine running, as that was my first attempt to get some bandwidth increase. However I see no traffic over my 2nd (slowest) WAN. This will very probably be due to me misconfiguring pfsense or firewall rules. I was hoping to be able to first set up "pass all" on both WAN's and after verification of functionality and speed, do more narrowing down.

Also I have a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND (version 1.7) and am thinkering of running DD-WRT or MLPPP or something on it.

Anyhow I would prefer to have a solution that is available to any machine on my network, and not only for a single machine.

Open to your suggestions!
Thanks a lot!

Erwin

reply to JeanInNepean