Two fibre broadband lines to one house?

VincentHanna · 12 Jul 2021 at 18:49

I am moving to a property which can only get fibre broadband at the moment.

It already has one line connected which will be active on Friday, but is quite limited in speed and I'm used to full FFTP

I assume it's perfectly possible to get another line to the house for an additional fibre connection?

What's the best way of doing it. At the moment I use 2x ASUS AX88u routers in 'aimesh' mode.

I assume they can only take one broadband connection each? (as opposed to both connections going in to the same one)

Is there a way to run a system like this with just one WiFi connection (like the mesh) or would each router then be sending its own WiFi network?

Just appreciate a bit of advice.

Sadly the house isn't in a 5g area so I can't use mobile broadband.

For all I know it'll have FFTP in 6 months but at the moment they are just saying 'by 2025'

VersionMonkey · 12 Jul 2021 at 19:32

You can order another FTTC line, there's a good chance there's two pairs in your dropwire so it might not even need BT to put in an extra cable.

But, are you looking for a single, faster internet connection or are you going to put some devices on one internet connection and the rest on the other?

If you want a single connection you'll need an ISP that supports line bonding and then a multi-wan router that does load-balancing - I don't know if the AX88u supports that in general and there could be dependencies on how the particular ISP does the load-balancing anyway. So it would probably be better to get a separate router to manage the internet connection and then use the Asus routers just for WiFi.

If you plan to run two separate internet connections, I'd imagine it'd be simpler to run two wireless networks.

VincentHanna · 12 Jul 2021 at 23:41

A single, fast one would be better, for downloading.

The AX88u is very high end. It definitely supports dual wan or wan aggregation.

Hyburnate · 12 Jul 2021 at 23:46

With the run of the mill ISP you're going to be pursuing load balancing, you'll effectively want two modems and one load-balancing capable router whether thats off the shelf or something a little more techy, could range from consumer brands through to prosumer through to something like pfSense or Untangle

Rroff · 12 Jul 2021 at 23:52

VincentHanna said:
Sadly the house isn't in a 5g area so I can't use mobile broadband.

No 4G?

If it is in a rural area may have some constraints on what is available on the BT end but should be able to have a second line put in relatively cheaply. In terms of what you then do with 2 connections gets very complicated but bonding them as one line is usually expensive and complicated.

Haze · 13 Jul 2021 at 04:30

I swithced to 4G and its 4x faster than the BT line i had, living out in the sticks is no fun

Rroff · 13 Jul 2021 at 04:36

Haze said:
I swithced to 4G and its 4x faster than the BT line i had, living out in the sticks is no fun

Sadly not as snappy as a fixed line though even with faster throughput - I notice the difference web-browsing switching between my 4G and FTTC never mind gaming.

I'm surprised just how much limited internet performance affects me actually - when we moved where I'm living now which is well out in the sticks the FTTC was running at like 15-18MBit/s down sub 1Mbit/s up with lots of packet loss and 4G was barely any better and I was struggling a bit with that - fortunately after getting a BT engineer in to clean up the wiring we got that to 30 down 5-6 up and with a bit of testing of networks and positioning I finally found a setup that usually gives me 30/10 during the day and around 60/30 at night on 4G which made a huge difference.

iwrox · 13 Jul 2021 at 08:23

I had 2 FTTC lines before moving to FTTP a few months back so definitely possible, mine came in via the same drop wire as someone else has already indicated is possible.

In my case I used pfSense to load balance the connections which enabled multi threaded downloads to hit full speed.

I think if I moved now, some variant of Ultrafast would be on the must have list!

Orcvader · 13 Jul 2021 at 13:07

VincentHanna said:
A single, fast one would be better, for downloading.

The AX88u is very high end. It definitely supports dual wan or wan aggregation.

It can't be one connection per router/modem though, it has to be the main one that controls both FTTC line. For the Asus if I remember correctly it will turn one of the LAN ports into a WAN port but you will need to hook up a separate modem to it. A HG612 or Vigor 130 will work.

Bare in mind while the Asus does support load balancing mode, it won't actually combine the speeds of the to lines together, rather it will spread the demand between the two lines. More information on here: https://www.asus.com/uk/support/FAQ/1011719/

VincentHanna · 13 Jul 2021 at 13:09

Seems pointless then, I was hoping to speed up downloads of game installs/patches etc.

Caged · 13 Jul 2021 at 13:24

Most downloads will be multi threaded, so simple load balancing will use both lines.

VincentHanna · 13 Jul 2021 at 13:25

Forgive my ignorance, I thought that was a Newsgroups thing?

Rroff · 14 Jul 2021 at 03:08

Caged said:
Most downloads will be multi threaded, so simple load balancing will use both lines.

I've found it a mixed story - Steam for instance can use multiple sources and for some stuff you will get the full download speed of both connections but sometimes one connection will sit at 75% of its capability and the other at 10-15% whatever you do for no apparent reason and it is faster just to use one of the connections. Other times it will just max out one connection and not touch the other whatever you do.