adsl and 4G bonding

GTiPUG · 25 Aug 2017 at 14:26

Didn't Linus do a video on binding separate broadband data streams? Think his solution cost an absolute bucketload though as it aggregated two separate broadband links into one and reassembled packets on the fly.

I reckon BT will have something similar out in the next couple of years for use with 4G.

rangor gubbins · 26 Aug 2017 at 21:11

Don't really want to be spending a bucket load!
I also contacted someone who is a vFast customer and he said that it used to be fantastic, but is now not good at all during peak times.

rangor gubbins · 9 Oct 2017 at 17:36

So after some more thinking I'm going to go for the 4G only option. I can get a 50GB download limit for £30 / month from vodafone. This would give us download speeds of around 37 Mbps and upload of 8 Mbps (tested on my mobile phone), compared to what we get with ADSL (6 Mbps down and 0.2 Mbps up).
I already have an Asus RT-N56U which i will use as the router.
I plan to buy one of these :
https://mikrotik.com/product/RBSXTLTE3-7
(but can only access LTE bands 3 (1800MHz) and 7 (2600MHz), but vodafone uses 800 Mhz and 2600 Mhz for 4G)
Or one of these:
https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/15382-solwise-4g-xpol-a0002/
(can access all 4G bands and 3G and 2G), but would need to buy another router that accepts LTE.

Anyone get any tips or experience with installing a 4G antenna at home and connecting to a router for wifi?

bremen1874 · 9 Oct 2017 at 17:49

If you can get 37 Mbps on a phone why do you need a roof mounted antenna?

Even at 37 Mbps you're going to be able to use the entire month's data allowance in few hours.

What's wrong with a 3G/4G USB dongle plugged into a suitable router?

rangor gubbins · 9 Oct 2017 at 18:00

I think you might be right there. Maybe I'll try a USB sim dongle in the Asus RT-N56U which i think can accept that.

Another alternative i found was this: LTE 3G/4G Sim Slot Wireless Router with A/VDSL support from Draytek 2860Ln but it's quite pricey at £400.

bremen1874 · 9 Oct 2017 at 18:20

I'd spend as little as possible until you're sure that you can live with having such a small data allowance.

rangor gubbins · 9 Oct 2017 at 18:52

Sounds very sensible!
I still wonder if ADSL + 4G bonding might be the way to go. But i can try out the 4G only route quite cheaply with the USB dongle. thanks for the suggestion

Rroff · 9 Oct 2017 at 18:55

Dunno about the RT-N56U but the RT-N66U with Merlin firmware, etc. can do load balancing between a VDSL and secondary (4G) connection - I assume the 56 can do similar.

BigT · 9 Oct 2017 at 20:50

Good luck with your data allowance of you go 4G only. I ran my two iPads on 4G only this month and got 18 days into my month before hitting my 30GB data cap. No streaming or anything. App updates on their own take an insane amount of data transfer every day it seems.

rangor gubbins · 9 Oct 2017 at 22:35

I've been looking at out data usage over the past 3 months, and according to Plusnet we've used between 25 - 46 GB / month. But I'm thinking that if we have a better connection it's very likely we'll use more.

Rroff said:
Dunno about the RT-N56U but the RT-N66U with Merlin firmware, etc. can do load balancing between a VDSL and secondary (4G) connection - I assume the 56 can do similar.

Thanks Rroff. That's a great tip. I will check it out. Would be brilliant if this works!

rangor gubbins · 9 Oct 2017 at 22:39

Ah, unfortunately the RT-N56U doesn't seem to be supported by the Merlin firmware. But good to know that load balancing doesn't need to be that expensive.

bremen1874 · 9 Oct 2017 at 22:52

I can't see how simple load balancing would fit your requirement.

In your situation I'd have had a second ADSL connection installed. An additional 6 Mbps of unlimited data is more useful than 50GB of something faster.

rangor gubbins · 10 Oct 2017 at 17:58

2 adsl lines would give us download speed of 2 x 6 Mbps, and upload speed of 2 x 0.2 Mbps.
Adsl + 4G gives us download speed of 6 + 37 Mbps, and upload of 0.2 + 8 Mbps.
For general browsing or streaming only the adsl would be enough. But the problem we have is if someone is streaming and someone else is browsing, or if we are working from home and need to download / upload large documents, or want to download other large files quickly.
I'm going to hunt around in the Members Market to see if anyone has a load balancing router with ADSL and USB for a 4G dongle.

Clav · 12 Oct 2017 at 13:40

rangor gubbins said:
2 adsl lines would give us download speed of 2 x 6 Mbps, and upload speed of 2 x 0.2 Mbps.
Adsl + 4G gives us download speed of 6 + 37 Mbps, and upload of 0.2 + 8 Mbps.
For general browsing or streaming only the adsl would be enough. But the problem we have is if someone is streaming and someone else is browsing, or if we are working from home and need to download / upload large documents, or want to download other large files quickly.
I'm going to hunt around in the Members Market to see if anyone has a load balancing router with ADSL and USB for a 4G dongle.

In that case though some decent QOS settings could help you? Have you got those settings on your router?

rangor gubbins · 12 Oct 2017 at 14:10

The current router is a plusnet job, and is pretty rubbish. certainly can't do any QOS.
I've just bought a secondhand draytek 2830n+, so i can set up QOS with that. I'm also going to try out 4G load balancing and see how it is.
If it turns out to be too expensive or not working very well, i may try a second adsl line instead. The problem is no amount of QOS tweaking is going to help uploading large files if the upload bandwidth is 0.2 Mbps.

bremen1874 · 12 Oct 2017 at 15:51

If your primary reason for needing the faster mobile connection is work related I'd reserve it for that task rather than trying to load balance 24/7.

Configure the router for failover or load balancing with the USB dongle as the primary WAN. You'd then just need to plug the USB dongle in when you need the extra speed and unplug it when you don't. The change would be transparent as far as the rest of the network is concerned so there'd be no device reconfiguration required.

BigT · 13 Oct 2017 at 13:22

bremen1874 said:
If your primary reason for needing the faster mobile connection is work related I'd reserve it for that task rather than trying to load balance 24/7.

Configure the router for failover or load balancing with the USB dongle as the primary WAN. You'd then just need to plug the USB dongle in when you need the extra speed and unplug it when you don't. The change would be transparent as far as the rest of the network is concerned so there'd be no device reconfiguration required.

Absolutely, this is what I do with policy based routing. Work stuff gets to use an entire WAN connection all to itself. Everything else on the internal network can fight over the other WAN connection.

wunkley · 14 Oct 2017 at 14:14

Sorry to hijack your thread, but I could be in the same situation soon - possibly moving house to a 'rural broadband' area (a paltry 1.5megabits), but has very good 4G coverage.

I saw you mentioned "BOOSTY" in your first post but seem to have given up on the idea, how come? I came across boosty by accident (it's not well known or promoted it seems) whilst looking for some possible solutions, and it sounds ideal. You don't have to use a mobile phone either, you can use a 4G/3G dongle, or presumably a Mifi type thing. Also, very interestingly I found a couple of reviews that said boosty will bypass the tethering limits imposed by most sim data plans.

Here's one review that mentions tethering...

"They can also access their very own portal at myboosty.com which provides more granular control (including port forwarding) to power users. Note that you can connect the router to a Wi-Fi hotspot and that your phone service provider won't flag it as a tethering service since the traffic is routed via the app."

"There's also a tantalising prospect. Pair that with a portable battery-powered wireless router (these cost as little as £20) and you could potentially be looking at a way to circumvent tethering restrictions set by your mobile phone provider either here or elsewhere.
We're thinking more specifically of Three and GiffGaff, both of whom have restrictions on tethering. But generally this technique will work for all service providers across the board."

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...modem-routers/boosty-broadband-1320460/review

Here's the other review I found that says it bypasses tethering restrictions...

"Cleverly, however, it bypasses tethering, so you won't suffer auto-capping imposed by many networks."
http://www.pocket-lint.com/review/1...outage-with-this-mini-mobile-connected-router

The boosty support site and forums doesn't specifically mention this bypassing tethering restrictions though, so whether it really does or not, I don't know. Maybe it's not something they shout about on purpose?

Take a look at the boosty forums here, lots of info...

http://forum.boosty.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=6

FlakGunna · 16 Oct 2017 at 09:34

Rroff said:
Then you have Windows 10 which will happily use up all your allowances on updates, etc. if you can't set the connection as metered and it tries its hardest to prevent you doing that unless its 110% identified as a mobile connection and even then at times it seems to ignore it.

My main internet is 4G at the moment with Three. I also use Windows 10 and no have problems with using too much data, mind you I do have unlimited so... you can turn updates via services anyway or just grab them on another connection and switch it off if you have minimal data.

Rroff · 16 Oct 2017 at 09:38

FlakGunna said:
My main internet is 4G at the moment with Three. I also use Windows 10 and no have problems with using too much data, mind you I do have unlimited so... you can turn updates via services anyway or just grab them on another connection and switch it off if you have minimal data.

Sure there are ways of stopping Windows 10 doing any update stuff entirely - increasingly needing 3rd party software to actually accomplish that.

With just connection metering set I'm still seeing about 70% of the available updates get pulled down on both my Windows 10 tablets - I "shouldn't" have to go to the lengths of manually disabling services, etc. to manage stuff like that.