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Multiple Broadband Connections to
Home/Business
Building a multi-broadband connected home or business just got easier.
By: Bruce Bahlmann - Contributing Author (your
feedback
is important to us!)
Created: May 8, 2003
Note: For help designing or installing your home or office LAN or for software tools to help you measure the performance of your ISPs and whether they are conforming to their service promises contact Birds-Eye.Net.
It used to be that if you had a single broadband
connection (e.g.
dsl,
satellite, or
cable) to your home or business you were the talk of the town. How times
have changed. Now days our reliance on broadband has reached the point where
a single broadband connection may not be enough. What are the options available to
people who need a readily available broadband service… oh, and more bandwidth too?
Lean how to build your own multi-broadband capable home.
Today’s broadband service providers have their hands
full just trying to maintain service levels, as the costs to drastically improve service quality and reliability are prohibitive. As a consequence, the overall
quality of their service has begun to slip. Although few people other than power users have noticed a
change in their
service quality, availability, or reliability the trend of broadband service providers has been to gradually ratcheted down their service levels
delivered to their subscribers. These changes have quietly taken
place over time such that today few guaranteed features actually
differentiate the two leading broadband services (DSL and cable). Basically, what you see is what you get and there are absolutely no guarantees.
In fact, its kind of scary to think that if you fully
take advantage of what your broadband service provider gives you they may come back to you at the
end of the month and charge you a usage penalty or possibly terminate your
service. For example in the Time Warner Cable service contract it clearly
states the following:
"Subscriber
acknowledges and agrees that Road Runner and Operator shall each have the
right to monitor Subscriber's “bandwidth consumption” (i.e. aggregate volume
of data that may be sent or received) at any time and on an on-going basis,
and to limit excessive bandwidth consumption by Subscriber (as determined by
Road Runner and/or Operator) by any means available to Operator or Road
Runner, including suspension or termination of the Road Runner Service.”
Need more bandwidth? Surely your broadband service
provider would love to sell you more (at an additional cost to you) but can they really
do that? Meaning, can broadband service providers really deliver continuous tiered bandwidth services to your home? The correct answer is “it depends” but generally the answer is "No". Buying more
bandwidth will not continually deliver you
more bandwidth rather just an "opportunity" to access additional bandwidth when it is
available. Since this additional bandwidth all comes with no guarantees, why buy more bandwidth? Consider the return on your investment if your service bandwidth is outside your control (dependent on network congestion among other things) and you don’t have any reliability.
Reliability = Diversity
It is unlikely that any single broadband service provider will deliver a highly reliable service to your home or business. In fact all broadband service providers use multiple Internet suppliers themselves. So if you’re heavy into online gaming, stock trading, or
telecommuting you’re basically at risk of losing your broadband connection at any time without warning and without much (if any) recourse. The only way to achieve reliability is to seek at least two
different broadband connections from two different providers using two
different physical connections. Today, an increasing number of US homes have
the capability to receive broadband services from one or more service
providers beyond their cable or telephone company. Some examples of these
companies include:
Satellite: StarBand (www.starband.com),
DirecWay (www.direcway.com)
Wireless: Usurf (www.usurf.com)
While each of these providers are generally no better than the
broadband service provided by telephone or cable, they do serve as
important alternative
connectivity options which will be discussed later. Innovation is also hard at work
with respect to creating new ways to deliver broadband connectivity. For
example, using power lines that provide electricity to your home is actively
being pursued as a transmission medium for residential broadband service. Healthy competition will allow broadband data service to
become more of a commodity rather than a luxury where by lowering prices for
bandwidth and allowing consumers to realistically exploit multiple
connections into their home.
How can one exploit two connections today? A new series
of consumer
routers (also called residential gateways) are currently available that provide at least two Wide
Area Network (WAN) ports. These products are listed below:
Such devices allow you to connect two broadband modems
to your home network where by enabling your personal computer(s) at least two different paths to its desired destination. The first option (FR24) gives you basic reliable connectivity and the other option (Pro800turbo) does everything the first option offers plus load balancing. Load balancing is
important as it allows you to exploit the power of both connections increasing your overall bandwidth capabilities and improving your experience. The Pro800turbo allows you to essentially turn two low tier (least costly low bandwidth) broadband services into a single reliable high-speed service - all for
a price competitive to a higher tier non-reliable service.
It is likely that it won’t be long before residential gateways provide “route intelligence” software capabilities. Route intelligence software (or route control) can continuously measure round trip times to your frequented destinations and then select which broadband service provider (or ISP) to use
based on shortest/quickest path – a terrific feature for stock traders and online gamers who desire the lowest possible latency service at all times.
Route
intelligence will also become useful as broadband operators seek to charge
by the bit instead of their current service-pricing model that sells you flat rate bandwidth service with an increasing number of constraints and conditions. "When" broadband service providers move to a charge by the bit model, high bandwidth subscribers must be prepared to move to a smarter residential
gateway that has at least two WAN ports. In a pure charge by the bit marketplace, the cost of bandwidth will be priced in tiers by time of day, day of the week, and even day of the month. These prices will greatly vary from one operator to the next - especially among local, state, national, or global
bandwidth suppliers. The route intelligence software will maximize the cost
efficiency of subscriber's bandwidth use allowing subscribers to exploit each ISPs pricing plan. Essentially, route intelligence will allow the residential gateway to rate each possible path and then make a decision to route the data to a particular WAN connection based on which is
the least cost alternative. Route intelligence could even consider multiple criteria before making a routing decision. Such a capability could simultaneously consider such things as price, required latency, or minimum necessary bandwidth, etc. before routing data. It’s the same technology that large Internet
Service Providers (ISP)s use to reduce their transport costs and soon it
will be in the hands of residential consumers allowing them to lower their
overall bandwidth usage costs.
Figure 1.0
Dual WAN Setup
If you’re seriously considering
adding a second broadband connection to your residence you may find Figure
1.0 useful. Figure 1.0 shows an example dual WAN setup - everything within the dotted box resides within a subscriber's home. In this setup there
are two different modems connected to two different service providers. In
this example, one broadband service provider is DSL and the other is
Satellite. The importance of using Satellite over for example cable is the fact that cable and telephone typically traverse the same utility poles. Thus if something catastrophic happens to a utility pole both telephone and cable services will likely be affected where as Satellite would be unaffected. To
achieve maximum reliability one should consider complementary broadband services that not only work similarly but also take drastically different physical paths in connecting ones residence. The outputs of each modem are connected to each of the WAN ports on the
dual WAN router. All routers provide some number of switch or hub ports that
will accept connections from one or more personal computer(s). The last
component shown is an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). Ideally, a UPS
should provide power to both of the modems as well as the router. In this
way, even if power is lost, your broadband connection will remain available.
Building a reliable Internet
connection to the home also opens up an endless number of service
possibilities. For example, with this type of connectivity your not forced to take email services from your Internet
provider rather you can get this elsewhere from any provider that will
guarantee something like an email address that will never change
or provide you the best possible
SPAM protection, custom web hosting, voice
over IP service, etc. A reliable connection isolates you from a dependency
on any one broadband service provider and allows you access to an open market for
any Internet delivered service you desire.
With at least two sources of Internet connectivity
you’ll soon find your need for premium levels of services from any one
broadband service provider is eliminated. When each home reaches a point
where broadband data services are reliable and cheap many things will change
with respect to a customer’s need or dependency on the last mile provider
for anything more than physical connectivity. Again, nearly all-residential
broadband service is “best effort” and even those providing Quality of
Service (QoS) will balk at the network reliability issue. Therefore if
you’re looking to upgrade your service don’t rule out the possibility of
diversifying rather than upgrading. It works, its reliable, and best of all,
its fast…
Note: For help designing or installing your home or office LAN or for software tools to help you measure the performance of your ISPs and whether they are conforming to their service promises contact Birds-Eye.Net.
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