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Channel bonding is a different thing, but you need upstream support to let it work. It's for example what these guys are doing (letting you connect to their server on the cloud): http://speedify.com/

... but their Xfinity Wifi Hotspot program, if implemented correctly, shouldn't cause customers any real harm.

What I believe happens is that your modem gets virtualized into two modems/routers. Cable Internet is already based on shared broadcast signals, so in terms of bandwidth it should be identical to adding a second, mostly inactive cable modem somewhere in your neighborhood. Since the 2nd modem is virtualized, it should not affect your transfer rates or bandwidth quotas.

This second modem is connected to a second, virtual router, with its own SSID. Unless there's a vulnerability in the router (which is possible), users of the Xfinity Wifi Hotspot should not be able to access your network, use your IP address, etc.

Available bandwidth could conceivably be reduced, due to more packets in the air, but WiFi is already unregulated and subject to additional interference. Increased load on the modem/router could theoretically reduce your bandwidth as well, although probably not by any noticeable amount.

The best claim is based on increased electricity usage. However, the additional energy needed is probably negligible. Here is a link to a blog post about the increased electricity costs, where they conclude it's about $8 per year in the mid-Atlantic area -- if it's being used. Comcast could give everyone a $1/mo credit for enabling the Xfinity WiFi Hotspot, completely eliminating the issue.

The problem is that they are enabling it without consent.

Comcast should give a large discount to incentiveize people in enabling them. Since they are Comcast, they just said fuck you and turned it on to rake in the sweet sweet profit.

... but their Xfinity Wifi Hotspot program, if implemented correctly, shouldn't cause customers any real harm.

What I believe happens is that your modem gets virtualized into two modems/routers. Cable Internet is already based on shared broadcast signals, so in terms of bandwidth it should be identical to adding a second, mostly inactive cable modem somewhere in your neighborhood. Since the 2nd modem is virtualized, it should not affect your transfer rates or bandwidth quotas.

This second modem is connected to a second, virtual router, with its own SSID. Unless there's a vulnerability in the router (which is possible), users of the Xfinity Wifi Hotspot should not be able to access your network, use your IP address, etc.

Available bandwidth could conceivably be reduced, due to more packets in the air, but WiFi is already unregulated and subject to additional interference. Increased load on the modem/router could theoretically reduce your bandwidth as well, although probably not by any noticeable amount.

The best claim is based on increased electricity usage. However, the additional energy needed is probably negligible. Here is a link to a blog post about the increased electricity costs, where they conclude it's about $8 per year in the mid-Atlantic area -- if it's being used. Comcast could give everyone a $1/mo credit for enabling the Xfinity WiFi Hotspot, completely eliminating the issue.

This is Alex from Connectify. Sorry to hear you weren't happy. We put out a new release *yesterday*, with huge improvements on how both loss and jitter are handled. Since you have both, I think this could fix your issues. Assuming that you are who your slashdot profile says you are, I just emailed you another license. Please give us another try, we're here to support you. New software here: http://speedify.com/blog/speed... Thank you for considering Speedify.

A MPTCP VPN would not work in the real world. When you tunnel TCP through it, you end out having to send ACKs for the ACKs. The end result is that the effects of even a tiny bit of packet loss is a performance meltdown: http://sites.inka.de/~W1011/de... To build Speedify, we needed to implement a new multipath protocol over UDP. But that let us do clever stuff with NACKing and retransmitting lost packets before TCP ever noticed, and we were actually able to reduce the effect of loss: http://speedify.com/blog/speed...

Hey, thanks for the mention. This Alex from Connectify. We've launched a new VPN service called Speedify that combines multiple network connections. It's very smart about jitter and retransmitting lost packets. I think it's exactly what the OP is looking for: http://speedify.com/blog/speed...

Hey, sorry for the hard sell, but this is exactly what Speedify does. It's a VPN that uses multiple connections. It also detects, and retransmits lost packets long before TCP notices. Latest beta has been tested on Amtrak trains combining their Wi-Fi with Verizon 4G. Please check it out: http://speedify.com/blog/speed...

The servers can't handle getting the data from different IP addresses.. That's why you need a VPN-style server in the middle to put the packets back together in a sane way. This is what we do with Speedify: http://speedify.com/blog/speed...

Ha, that's exactly what I thought when I started implementing it. But it turns out it's way harder than it appears. Differences between internet connection in latency, loss,bandwidth, jitter, and buffering all conspire to make this a very difficult, multiyear project. That said, we've done it already and put servers all over the world, so you can just sign up and use it. Speedify: http://speedify.com/blog/speed...

No! Why is everyone so stupid? The answer is Speedify.

This is what we do with Speedify: it's a VPN that uses all of your Internet connections at the same time. By the time we started dealing with issues like jitter and loss the level of effort exploded into years. That said you should check it out: http://speedify.com/

Ugh! So much stupidity in the replies to this question. The answer is Speedify.

What you have described is Connectify's Speedify, it's a VPN that combines multiple internet connections together. As of the latest release it handles both jitter and loss, please check it out: http://speedify.com/blog/speed...

In fact, this does exist off the shelf already, it's called Speedify, and it's a VPN that uses all of your connections together: http://speedify.com/

http://speedify.com/features/

This kinda sounds like what you're looking for.