Making Wireless Carriers Play Together

An anonymous reader writes "Ok, so the idea of opening all Wi-Fi networks in a misthought utopian vision didn't go over so well. But no one discussed the best part of open Wi-Fi networks: bonding different Wi-Fi and mobile carriers to get the best price and decent performance. We could save money and avoid lock in by bouncing to whoever gives us the best rate, and, when we need speed, jump on all of them at once for a network bonded boost."

Comments

Go Away

[Antipater]

You don't get to make another Slashdot submission to say "and another thing!" just because nobody liked your first one.

Re:Go Away

[Antipater]

Well, of course. Wouldn't everyone here like to see "Making Wireless Carriers Play Together [With Chainsaws]"?

Re:Go Away

[JazzLad]

Whoooosh

What's the point?

[Nethemas the Great]

Just because you can connect to multiple spigots doesn't meant that they don't eventually lead to the same water main. As for saving the customer money Android already provides for the ability to switch over to configured WiFi hotspots when detected.

Re:What's the point?

[mcelrath]

Sure Android will switch to a wifi hotspot, but that paywall/clickwall the provider put up will cause all apps/browsers to download the clickwall instead of their intended destination, and break. I frequently find myself having to disable wifi because I'm in a coffee shop that I frequent, and don't want to deal with your clickwall just so I can pull up google maps to get directions. Happens in airports especially. I'd just rather use the 3G than deal with your clickwall, for some trivial info lookup. Android needs to figure out whether it has a real connection or a clickwall, before routing all your traffic through the new connection.

Switching between wifi and cellular is far from perfect. I don't believe e.g. Skype can really handle switching upstream providers at all...

Re:Free wifi? Don't forget the SWAT team!

[Austerity Empowers]

At some point an IP address would stop becoming sufficient justification to raid someone's house.

Re:Free wifi? Don't forget the SWAT team!

[CanHasDIY]

At some point an IP address would stop becoming sufficient justification to raid someone's house.

That point will probably be when the cops bust down the wrong door, and a firefight ensues.

Which, considering the pure idiocy of Knee-Jerk America, will likely result in even more attempts to ban guns, instead of focusing on and fixing the actual problem of overzealous, militarized police departments.

Wishful Thinking

[CanHasDIY]

You all know the words - it's sing along time!

Why can't we be friends,
Why can't we be friends...

Wouldn't mind seeing what options exist

[Yoik]

I am in a neighborhood with choices in broadband, and have considered buying redundancy. Current promo options make it very feasible.

Comcast here has reliability issues due both to overhead wires that go out for days(annually), and an irritating tendency to show lag (or momentary outages) in the 10-90 second range(daily or worse). I assume the latter is due to doing service on the live system, but is impossible for me to diagnose as it is gone before I can characterize the problem to even complain.

I wouldn't mind adding a cheap DSL if I can bond the two in a way to improve my service, but I am not clear how to do that. True bonded service might work, but I don't know how to set that up on two IP addresses. My current router won't do it, and I haven't looked into equipment choices.

Any suggestions?

Re:Wouldn't mind seeing what options exist

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in a neighborhood with choices in broadband, and have considered buying redundancy. Current promo options make it very feasible.

Comcast here has reliability issues due both to overhead wires that go out for days(annually), and an irritating tendency to show lag (or momentary outages) in the 10-90 second range(daily or worse). I assume the latter is due to doing service on the live system, but is impossible for me to diagnose as it is gone before I can characterize the problem to even complain.

I wouldn't mind adding a cheap DSL if I can bond the two in a way to improve my service, but I am not clear how to do that. True bonded service might work, but I don't know how to set that up on two IP addresses. My current router won't do it, and I haven't looked into equipment choices.

Any suggestions?

Try something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Syswan-SW24-Dual-WAN-Router/dp/B007SIT0VC

I used it for a Cable and DSL combo. Might need to reboot it every couple of months, but it's good otherwise. Pretty simple web UI.

Re:Wouldn't mind seeing what options exist

[bill_mcgonigle]

Any suggestions?

You can't bond two different ISP's, unless you own the end of a tunnel somewhere else (maybe a VPS), but you can pretty easily load balance and do failover with pfSense v2. The quick version: you set up both interfaces, both gateways, then you set up a gateway group with your fast ISP as Tier 1 and your slower ISP as Tier 2, and then in your LAN firewall rules, you put in an 'allow to all' rule at the end, with the gateway set to the gateway group. There's also a tick box to make the use of a gateway sticky for session affinity purposes and other variables that can be tuned (e.g. drop a member of the group on packet loss or latency thresholds).

Re:Free wifi? Don't forget the SWAT team!

[geminidomino]

Call me cynical, but I think that probably has more to do with the nature of the crime (theft) rather than the quantity or quality of the evidence. An IP address is plenty good enough when someone says something that's a particular type of stupid on a webforum.

Re:Free wifi? Don't forget the SWAT team!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That point will probably be when the cops bust down the wrong door, and a firefight ensues.

Nearly already happened. But it was for kiddee porn so, it was ok.