Due to this, the traffic does not go down one specific line and does not need to return on the same line meaning the OP can achieve sending data down one and receiving up the other at least on the SB solution.

Sorry, I may be being thick here but I still can't understand how this can happen across 2 different ISPs and 2 different IP addresses. Does the SharedBand product rewrite the IP headers to get the traffic coming back via a different path? If it does not then the return traffic must return by the same path as the original request - I can't see any way for the remote endpoint to know that it can send the traffic via a different path or indeed that it should in order to balance the traffic.

OK, think I have now found the answer to my question.

If I understand it correctly the routers actually connect via the ISP to a SharedBand aggregation point. So, because the hardware at both ends are operating the load balancing the SharedBand remote end essentially does the upload/download and then sends/receives that data via the routes to/from the end user balancing it across the links.

But for £10 per line per month with a 250GB data limit that could prove a pretty expensive proposition. And add the up front costs (£49 plus between £49 and £299 per line for routers and £10 shipping) then you have to really need the solution to justify it.

Thats right as per my earlier ref to having kit installed on the other end and can be outside of the ISP network.

Sharedband direct costs can be expensive but there are various suppliers offering the services too, on their own networks which work out far more competitive.

Matt

In reply to a post by Chaoss:

Hi there, I have 2 separate lines coming into the house, one has a great upstream but quite bad downstream with packet loss and the other has great downstream but a poor upstream speed. I was wondering if it would at all be possible to utilize the downstream of one and the upstream of another for SVN, gaming, large file transfers, streaming and general use?

The 2 connections use different technologies (FTTC and DOCSIS 3.1) and as far as I know rules out bonding. What equipment would I need if this is possible.

Thanks

I've read this again and will give the same response. The closest you could get without additional hardware out in the internet is using a dual WAN router and a series of routing policies. This would be complicated though, and tiresome to administrate.

I use this to a very limited extent here, with a very select group of services which don't load balance too well pushed down a single line.

If you know where you're going to be downloading from you can set the policies to route requests to those servers via your VM connection, and have everything else go via the FTTC connection.

Beyond that a VPN based solution is the way to roll.