Bonded or Load Balanced Broadband for home?

[flyingjase]

Can anyone help?

My broadband speed is pony on account of me being miles from the echange apparently. Also they are not upgrading my exhange to that new fangled ADSL2 something for years. In order to speed things up 2 things have been suggested to me:-

Bonded line - 4 lines that will alledgely give me 1mb up / 8 mb down but comes at a huge £400 per month or

Load balanced line (using barracuda link balancer) - 2 lines at £40 per month (so signifcantly cheaper but with no quoted speeds)

They are both offered via StreamNet

Is the bonded line really worth 10 time the amount each month? Are there any other options?

We don't have fibre optic round here either.

Thanks!

[flyingjase]

paul26982 said:

flyingjase said:

Can anyone help?

My broadband speed is pony on account of me being miles from the echange apparently. Also they are not upgrading my exhange to that new fangled ADSL2 something for years. In order to speed things up 2 things have been suggested to me:-

Bonded line - 4 lines that will alledgely give me 1mb up / 8 mb down but comes at a huge £400 per month or

Load balanced line (using barracuda link balancer) - 2 lines at £40 per month (so signifcantly cheaper but with no quoted speeds)

They are both offered via StreamNet

Is the bonded line really worth 10 time the amount each month? Are there any other options?

We don't have fibre optic round here either.

Thanks!

im in the same boat regarding speeds and the options you have, i'd never consider those prices

The £40 a month doesn't seem too bad if it works and that's a big if. They are not committing to a set speed. The £400 is a joke - at work I pay £600 per month for 30mb fibre optic leased line!

Have you got better pricing with another provider?

[flyingjase]

rpguk said:

I'm not an expert on these things (in fact I asked a similar question a while ago, because I have two lines and wondered about if it was possible to link them)

But I don't think you need to use any particular ISP to use the load balancer. Would it be more cost effective to purchase your own load balancer and sort your own connections (which I'd have thought would be cheaper then 2 x £40pm). The speed would then surely be something close to 2 x whatever speed you get from your current ADSL line?

Edited to add - Hmm, reading your OP again it seems perhaps that's exactly what you're suggesting!

Edited by rpguk on Tuesday 10th August 20:29

The cost is 2 x BT lines whatever that is plus 1 x £40 to StreamNet. (plus the cost of the load balancer). I don't know what extras Streamnet do over & above normal boradband for the £40

[flyingjase]

sonic_2k_uk said:

TurricanII said:

Bear in mind that if you download a file from a website over load balanced adsl lines that your connection will still only be as fast as one adsl line, the load balancer just picks the least busy adsl. If the bonded link is bonded at your home AND your ISP then you should get one fast connection as you would expect.

+1

Interesting - in that case, do you know of any cheaper bonded providers?