Slashdot Mirror
Crowdsourced Network Planning For Connection-Bridging Startup
An anonymous reader writes "Tom's Hardware reports on the Connectify Switchboard software that "divides the user's traffic between Wi-Fi, 3G/4G and Ethernet-based connections on a packet-by-packet basis. Even a single stream — such as a Netflix movie — can be split between two or three Internet connections for a higher resolution and faster buffering." As part of its Kickstarter campaign, Connectify is geolocating their backers to optimize deployment of their servers. This is a clever way for supporters to influence the project beyond pledge levels and stretch goals, and it's actually kind of fun to watch."
I, for one, am 100% gung-ho about having a 3rd-party in the 'cloud' handling every single one of my packets so that they can balance them between my connections!
The proprietary client adding complexity to my machine's network stack is a bonus, of course.
We are going to keep the minimum logs required by law. But we are going to comply with the law, just as any company must. So, for those worried about the privacy implications, there are several options: a) run your own server, we have options to buy the software for your server, or b) use a VPN (dial the VPN after connecting Switchboard... all your traffic will be encrypted by them, then spread out by us, you can get the best of both). Of course you need to have VPN provider whom you trust.
Thanks for asking, No, we do not guarantee privacy. We do our best to ensure your privacy, and keep as little information as possible, but we a) are focused on speed, not security and b) must comply with court orders. We work with VPNs, if you have a VPN you trust. dial them after firing up the Switchboard. They encrypt your traffic, then we spread it across connections, on the server side, we put it back together, and then hand it to the VPN server. It all works nicely, you can have speed and security.
We rolled our own so we could overcome SCTP's problems with NAT traversal (which only seem partially fixed by trying to tunnel SCTP over UDP) and so we could do things like track the flight time of every packet
Yes, many of us have shitty internet connections from a small selection of shitty providers. I know, let's saturate our already oversold connectivity to give said shitty providers another excuse to crank up rates with the bonus of hitting your usage caps even sooner!
From what I can tell, this "Switchboard" is basically trying to consolidate and minimize connection overhead, which should theoretically offer modest performance gains. But your bandwidth is your bandwidth, no amount of software is going to stretch it.
I wonder how much Kickstarter capital would need to be raised to start an ISP that doesn't employ the business model off shitting on its customers.
It would be cool if I could run switchboard on a pi and reserve it to all my devices.
But I guess that's not a question :)
Sorry to rain on your parade, but multipath TCP already does this...