Broadband Connection Aggregation
December 30th 2011 at 11:44 UTC by Simon
I have known that ISPs in the UK can do this on their own hardware for some time but it usually requires you to have a special piece of kit to enable it at your end. As I am somewhat of a cheapskate, whilst the idea was interesting I decided not to opt for that service. I did however recently come across an article (I forget where I read it now) that explained that you could have a similar effect with a layer 3 solution rather than layer 2 provided by the ISP. This method enables you to implement this solution irrespective of ISP or connection type or speed. It's called VPN Bonding.
I have a Netbook that has a built in GPRS modem and I have a server in a Data Center that I could use as my end point as it has LOTS of Bandwith and a 100MBit connection so I set about giving it a try using the LAN interface and the GPRS modem on the Netbook.
After some trial and error, I had success! Albeit not much success as I believe the latency added by the GPRS link was negatively affecting the link.
I do plan on experimenting some more in the near future, preferably with 2 hard links, however I have documented my efforts. Note that this guide doesn't apply to 3G but instead assumes two hard links however it shouldn't be too hard to modify.
Suggestions or comments are welcome... when I get around to making the contact page! (Yes, it still isn't done...)
Full documentation can be found under the article VPN Bonding
