ADSL Bonding & Throttling?

Hi,

I'm looking into ADSL Bonding/Throttling for a customer of mine. Basically they want a fast connection, but as cheap as possible, I figure even paying £24.99 for a premium service is cheaper than a 2mb Leased Line for £12,000.

I said I'd looking into bonding a number of ADSL lines together, as currently they can get 3mb download on a single connection, so bonding 2 would give them 6mb. However, its the upload speed that really matters to them (graphics company with multiple sites accessing large files over a VPN). Currently the upload speed is 750kbps, but even bonding 2 lines together would only make this about 1.5mb, which might not be enough.

I'd read somewhere a while back that there was a technology that could do ADSL Throttling, by sacrificing some download speed, you could get greater upload speed, i.e. on 2 bonded ADSL lines you could sacrafice 6mb for 4mb, but increase upload from 1.5mb to 3.5mb.

However, I can't find the company that did this, or any other info on doing it. Does anyone know an ISP that offeres bonding & throttling? Any help, or suggestions would be appreciated! Or if anyone can think of a better way of doing this, I'd be interested!

Many thanks

Ben

Theoreticly, you can only bond in multiples of 2mbps, so the user would require 3 lines with 2mbit each. The technology you refer to as throttling is SDSL which is commonly known. You should ideally know what SDSL is as its the most basic of all technology. Your client could always load balance two lines together. Giving speeds of twice what they are, paying no premium for SDSL quality or any outlay for expensive equipment. Load balancing can be done simply with another broadband line (line rental therefore required) connected to a load balancing router. I have seen load balancing routers for around £100.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

I hadn't considered SDSL, last time I checked with BT it seemed vastly more expensive than ADSL, although the price seems to have dropped since then. Also, I'm sure the product I read about last year said it worked with standard ADSL.

What are your thoughts on BE? I see bethere.co.uk offer BE Pro, which gives up to 2.5mb upload speeds for £21 per month. Two of these bonded/load balanced would be cheaper than 2mb SDSL which is around £170pm.

Thanks

Ben

Hi Ben
We offer bonding on ADSL/SDSL lines, with ADSL2+ coming on stream better upload speeds are also available, we can bond up to 4 ADSL lines. A check first to see if the client is on an ADSL2+ exchange, this would show if the better upload speed was available. I have placed the details here If you would like further details please let me know.

Kind regards

Be are the ones offering the fastest upload, where available.

Hi SAQ,

Thanks for the reply.

I assume those costs are per month? £89.99pm/£149.99pm seem to be good prices for whats offered, although the setup cost is a little steep, but I guess spread over a few years the savings over a leased line will outweigh the initial cost.

Thanks

Ben

don't forget a leased line comes with a service level agreement, is very likely symmetrical and is also likely to be uncontended. DSL is cheaper for a reason.

Hi

I'd read somewhere a while back that there was a technology that could do ADSL Throttling, by sacrificing some download speed

This would be Annex M on ADSL2+ that in theory can give 2.5Meg upload speed by using some tones from the downstream. It can provide upto 3.5Meg I think however this isn't allowed in the UK as it can interfer with normal ADSL.

Annex M requires a very short line to give you any benefit, so unless you have a line that is good enough to provide around 15 Meg or more download speed, then Annex M will not be of benefit.

Be/O2 on LLU as standard do not cap upload speeds and provide as much as the line will allow, and on normal ADSL2+ most lines get greater than 1Meg up.

Regards

Phil

Thanks for all the replies and info guys.

I've found the following, which describes a bonded ADSL solution, what are your thoughts:
http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/Internet/ADSL-Bonding...

One of the comments at the bottom of the page says that they found little performance increase in this solution, as they didn't think MLPPP was support on their exchange any more. Is there anyway of finding out this kind of information?

I've already found out that BE won't supploy their BE Pro product as the client is too far away from the exchange, and SDSL would give a slower upload speed than they currently have with their BT Business ADSL package (SDSL checker said it would only be 256k upload, they currently have 800k).

I've found the cost of a leased line from BT, £7000pa on a 5 year contract for 2mb/2mb, but the client doesn't want to spend this sort of money. So I'm left with trying to piece together the best solution possible, for the cheapest price possible!

Ben

Might be worth having a chat with someone at an ISP who used to provide MLPPP, Zen springs to mind. I did read a while ago that it was going to go the journey and the post on the site you linked to seems to indicate it has gone the journey.

As your client requires a decent upload speed, it could be the case of them having to pay for a leased line.