[Wylug-discuss] Mulitilink PPP with ADSL on Linux

[Edward Chapman]

Which ISP is this, and are these two connections really combined using
multilink PPP or are they two separate ADSL connections with a box using
round robin?

There are a lot of cheap boxes on the market which appear to do bonding
but are just round robin.  The only kit on the market which does true
bonding (where the connections are combinedin to one) using multilink ppp
are cisco routers costing over £1000, and the ISP has to have mlppp setup
on their end.  Nildram are the only ISP doing this at the moment.

Up to now the cheapest way to get upload speeds higher than 256kbs
has been SDSL which still costs a few hundred at least to setup and over
£150 per month line rental.  That's if you can get it.

Now with Nildram it's possible to have true 512, 768 or 1024 Kbps upload
(minus about 3% overhead for mlppp)  with 2, 3 or 4 ADSL lines  on one PC
with Linux and 2, 3 or 4 Speedtouch.

Steve King said:

> Using /two/ alcatel usb things? Gah! That sounds horrid! The ISP we use
> at work offers us a 4 meg adsl connection by bonding two 2 meg adsl
> links, and they include a box to do the trickery iirc.  I've tried using
> squid to round robin requests between our two connections, but this
> works really badly if one connection filters different URLs to the
> other!
>
> If anyone wants to try though this I do have two usb things doing
> nothing...
>
> Steve (an ex alcatel usb thing user)