Combining multiple network links into a single usable link is something the industry is very slowly moving towards.
Multipath TCP is already a thing and is used extensively by iPhones at least for Apple framework services.
If you have multiple network connections, you want to use a multi-path VPN to bond them together to allow you to aggregate bandwidth or reduce total latency or reduce packet loss.
As somebody else mentioned speedify is a commercial multi-path VPN service you can use today on any device.
You could also build your own if you’re so inclined, but wire guard does not have multi-path built in you have to bod something together. There is a patch for open VPN for multiPath, but it is not in the upstream
We can and have. It’s Multi-Link Operation (MLO) which was part of WiFi 7 standards. Here’s how it works.
My router has it and it is indeed quite fast, but it’s new technology. There are currently very few client devices that support MLO.
Oh, but if you mean from different SSIDs then checkout load balancers like Speedify.
Because it’s not useful. Two routers still share the same frequencies and thus can’t send more data over the same air. A single router can already use multiple frequencies to increase throughput. You don’t need two to do that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIMO
If you want to use multiple internet connections and combine their speed, that’s possible. Dunno how though and I guess to work best it would need a server somewhere else like a VPN to manage the packets coming from different ips
Software defined wan (SDWAN) is the industry term for bundling multiple independent internet connections to maximise bandwidth.
Can you explain what this “software defined x” means that you hear everywhere?
Basically it means to not have a special designed hardware for task X but to do much of it in software which gives you more flexibility. And also let’s you configure and use X a bit more flexible.
E.g. software defined networking: If you run several virtual machines on a server, you may define the whole network between them virtually in software instead of doing it on the hardware side. Sure, you still need an ethernet card in your server to connect it to other servers and the internet, but all load balancing, switches, firewalls, VLANs, etc. between the virtual machines (or containers) on your server are virtualized in software - or maybe eben between servers.
Same goes for e.g. Software Defined Radio. In the early days you had dedicated hardware to control the mobile network and the antennas and such. Today you “just” have the antenna and a transceiver that is capable of producing and receiving a wide range of signals and modulations. All encoding, decoding and interpretation the signals is done in software. If your hardware is capable enough, the upgrade from e.g. 4G to 5G may only be a software update for all base stations.
But what about for services other than X, like Facebook or YouTube?
/j
These are all software defined social networking, aren’t they?
I was just joking about the placeholder X being X (formerly Twitter)
The main ones I hear are software defined WAN. Which means you can do per application internet steering.
Software defined LAN is more about authorising specific applications to access the corporate lan.
SD-WAN includes that but it is not its sole purpose, although I agree most vendors will say that’s what you want. WAN/Link Aggregation, Multilink Aggregation, Link Load Balancing, Equal Cost Multipath, WAN Virtualisation, etc are ways to bundle multiple links together.
In WIFI terms, it’s called channel bonding, it was proprietary and various vendors had their own implementations, see “Super G”.
I agree but most of the wan optimisers have rebranded to SDWAN because that was the hype about 7 years ago.
With wifi specifically yea, trying to multiplex a technology that is effectively a CSMA/CA is hard and there is no interoperability.
Two APs should be on different channels so they don’t interfere
This exists, kind of
There’s bonded connections in several senses
Bonded ports but this doesn’t increase throughput in the way you’re thinking. eg if I bond 2 1 gigabit Ethernet ports I can’t connect at 2 gigabits, I can connect 2 users at up to one gigabit each (or several users totaling 2 gigabits but no 1 user at more than 1 gigabit)
bonding routers can take two internet connections and combine them, which is closer to what you are probably imagining. They combine throughput, eg a 100mbit connection and a 100mbit connection become a 200mbit connection although realistically it’s not that perfect and you have to get the right services for it, not just any connection will work, it’s a rabbit hole and generally much slower and worse latency than if you just got a traditional connection. Think people using starlink and 5g internet in rural settings
There’s also something called speedify, which is software that claims to do the above in software alone, bonds two connections to combine throughput. Never tried it, reviews are mixed. Some say it works, some say it’s spotty, some say you only get the speed of the one connection, etc.
Speedify works really well.
It has different bonding modes
- Duplicate/ redundant
- Throughout maximization
- Automatic
Auto mode does its own retransmits if packets don’t make it and it can fail over connections without losing TCP sockets.
I imagine people’s disappointment is due to them not understanding their own network characteristics.
We had a guest speaker from ericson back when I was in uni. According to them that’s been a thing for a while now
Just duckduckgo/mojeek your question. I got link to speedify for example.
You mean “Bing it”
Could you be any more wrong?
If you mean that these search engines use Bing, than this is true only for DDG. Mojeek is independent.
I’ll give you an up vote as I want that to be a thing. “Let me Bing it for you”
In case you’re wondering about the downvotes, using any search index verbification other than “Google” demonstrates greater techno-activism than pointing out that DDG uses the Bing API. Your effort has been noted, however, and will be evaluated at the next summit.
The purposeful insinuation of a falsehood was enough to get people to admit that DDG is just Bing with a hat on while dogpiling on the assumed “mistake.” I’ll take it.
Mmm, understood. Antiheroics are especially well-regarded. I’ll be sure this is accurately reflected in the report.
Make sure to note I’m really tall so I get preferential treatment due to their unconscious biases
We’ve been doing better time sharing since WiFi 6. Remember this all has to be backwards compatible.
WiFi 7 has its own new band and its really fast.
IIRC wifi6 added the option for backplaning to be a different frequency, but not everyone implemented it. 6e even added 7ghz but basically nobody implemented it. So even with brand new equipment, you were super at the mercy of your end user devices and whether or not your mesh was physical or wireless and whether or not the mesh nodes themselves supported the same backplaning channels.
Hm yeah of course.
I wonder if you configure them to be a trunk
My guess is that a network card can handle only one network at a time
Yeah it would probably be better to do in the router.
probably because it’s more complicated than just improving the bandwidth on single wifi networks, which we have been making steady progress on. picking the low hanging fruit first.
