an interesting idea

[ned+xtension at mrochek.com]

> My comments: Hogwash!

I pretty much agree.

> Connection teaming is intended to let you use different connections
> (i.e. actual multiple connections with their own bandwidth per
> connection) in order to essentially add the bandwidths together and
> increase your effective bandwidth. This works reasonably well when
> you have a bandwidth constricted channel such as a modem.  It allows
> you to get more bandwidth than you can with a single channel.  It
> would even work with a DSL modem if you had multiple DSL modems on
> multiple phone lines.  Of course there is some overhead involved so
> for N channels you don't get N times the bandwidth.

Yeah, but you can get pretty close. This idea is called "channel bonding" and
has been around for a very long time in a variety of different forms. For
example, I believe the old STU-2  secure phones bonded together two separate
phone lines to get enough bandwidth. And back when ISDN lines were the thing I
recall seeing boxes that would combine a couple of them. Heck, the capability
of using multiple network layer connections for a single transport layer
connection is actually a basic feature of the OSI network stack (although I
don't believe I've ever seen it actually used).

> In the example given on the website, he took one channel (his DSL
> modem) split it  among two connections and then used the software to
> combine the two channels back into a single connection.  The only
> apparent speed increase he achieved was in web browsing when he was
> able to download multiple web requests simultaneously.  You can set
> many browsers up to do this without needing to go through all of the
> other complexity.

Actually, I believe it was a cable modem, not DSL. And he only saw a speedup
when he used addresses on different subnets. If the speedup is real (as you
say, a big if) this suggests that the IP routers the cable company is using are
imposing a bandwidth cap or some other limit that's lower than his
modem-controlled bandwidth cap. So when you spread your usage across two of
them you avoid the IP-layer limit somehow. That's a fairly oddball situation,
and given how cable companies are reacting to customers actually using
the bandwidth they bought it is not one I'd be inclinced to exploit.

				Ned