Fusion releases bonded broadband product

It is not possible to deliver 'true' channel bonding with services from different service providers. The services need to be of the same technology and run over the same path, such that they have near identical speeds and latencies.

Otherwise, rather than being able to offer 'per packet' load balancing (a bit like a multiplexor) it is only possible to offer session/flow based load balancing. In turn, this means that any single session/flow will only be able to utilise one link and will never be able to leverage the full capacity that would otherwse be available (e.g. a single FTP session would flood one link whilst the others are dormant).

Also, to bond services from a any number of 3rd party service providers will almost certinaly require some sort of protocol (e.g. MPPP), which will result in protocol overhead and eat away at the available bandwidth.

Cloud Plus offers true 'per packet' load balancing of up to four like services (i.e. same type, speed and path) via our MPLS network where clients are not in a position to upgrade to higher speed access technologies or where bonded services better suit their requirements. We leverage the capabiilties of our network to do this such that there is no protocol overhead and customers get full use of the available capacity.

i agree with the above comment from jules rumsey, i am running a big ISP but unable to provide such things to customers. if it is truely implemented and has not much overheads then its great technology. lets see what comes from future.

Hi Jules,
You are 100% correct. If you view the challenge from utilising traditional approaches your result will be as you said, “a single FTP session would flood one link whilst the others are dormant “.

But if you tackle the challenge with a different line of thought, a lot of work and some very very skilled engineers it can be solved. The technology we have implemented has been designed from the ground up to work with different types of paths, even with different speeds and latencies. This is done using two mechanisms. The first is by distributing packets across links on a proportionate basis on the sender side to try and avoid massive out-of-order packet delivery. Secondly, on the receiver side we put all the IP packets back into order. This allows TCP to perform properly and not trigger congestion avoidance, which I'm sure you know can be devastating to performance. We have tested it, used it, proven it and the results are excellent!. Different technologies, different routes and different providers.

Our technology does NOT use flow based load balancing. We use some session information to optimise the packet switching, but it’s only used to increase the speed and not pin a session to any particular path. A single FTP session will always flood ALL links giving you the combined speed of the sum of all the connections available.
We are using proprietary packet encapsulation, which adds a very small amount of overhead. This is compensated by using data and header compression which many other technologies like Multilink PPP and MPLS are incapable of doing.

Our technology does not require MPLS, MLPPP etc. Our technology will happily bond any existing IP connection including PPPoE, Wireless, ADSL, Cable, SHDSL, Fiber etc.
The overhead is small, less than 5% ( and getting better!) We believe the benefits for business customers far out weigh this small penalty.

Customers are free to choose us or any provider for their physical links based on speed, price, or SLA, straddling multiple technologies and carriers is a great way to build progressive speed whilst also getting the added benefit of carrier and technology redundancy.
Additionally, we provide sub second fail overs in the event of any path becoming unavailable. A lot of other technologies do not handle fluctuating line conditions or line outages and in many cases will only provide you with a multiple of the slowest connection available.

We are always looking at ways to expand our presence, we would be more than happy partner with Cloud Plus to bring faster services to business customers, feel free to contact us.

Jason Maude