Broadband bonding services / dual WAN routers / faster file transfer speeds?

What options exist for connecting multiple broadband connections and providing a faster solution for transferring files, both up and down?

 

Hi, I am not an IT person but there are T1 connections and, I think- T2 also there are so called "full tolerance" devices that can use a number of given connections to upload / download data at their full capacity but it rather complicated and costly for the purpose. Dedicated fiber optics connection would, probably, be king of all. Also data transfer speed depend big time on your provider's back bones, meaning that provider has to supply everyone in your area with minimum promised data speed that being said they may limit each individual user with certain max speed.

 

Broadband bonding service

If you need to bond both download and upload, one option is Mushroom Networks. You would need both the appliance and the broadband bonding service which is a monthly fee. I have not used Mushroom Networks myself to date, but did contact them for information a year ago when I was looking for a solution to bond upload traffic for single large file uploads (as opposed to simply round robin multiple providers using a multi-WAN router)
http://www.mushroomnetworks.com

 

There are many routers on the market that allow you to bond your connections. Google bonded dsl router for a lot more information and range of routers.

 

A Multi-WAN router is the most cost effective way if the time per file is ok but your current isp line is clogged.

As I understand it, with a multi-WAN router if you have ten 100MB pdf files waiting to transfer and you add a multi-wan router and another isp line, ideally half will go over one line and half over the other (or approximately half.)

However if you have one huge 1GB pdf of all the pages together in a single file you're waiting to transfer, a multi-wan router alone won't provide faster transfer of that file except having the second connection for other files as the single file will still go over one of the two lines (unless it can be broken up into smaller pieces.)

Also a mutl-wan router alone won't work if your transfer is over a secure connection that can't tolerate the source or destination being multiple lines at once.

Ideally your ISP would provide a bonding service, but only some do.

Another third-party bonding service to compare with mushroom networks is now shared band - www.sharedband.com
It supports either two or four bonded ISP connections and the hardware is more affordable than mushroom's with a choice of their "power routers" or modified firmware off-the-self routers that work in conjunction with their POPs to provide bonded lines that appear to the outside world to be a single "normal" isp connection. They also have more POP locations in the US than Mushroom Networks meaning they can potentially provide a POP closer to you for less added latency.