When 56k modems or even ISDN were the method of connecting to the 'net you used to be able to combine two 56k modems or two ISDN lines together in order to get a higher bandwidth download.

I was wondering if it is possible to do the same on WiFi?

So for example if there are 3 multiple internet connections via WiFi available in a place all with, say, seperate 512k connections to the WAN internet, then you could get 512k x 3 = 1536k download speed (yes I know these figures theoretical).

Curious thoughts I have sometimes!

"theoretically" possible, never heard of it actually happening though

three 512k connections all within reach of the wired network, then wifi to the wired network would work though

It would need the support of each of the ISPs plus a new wireless driver for your network.

Could be done but hasn't and in my opinion never will be

You would also need multiple wi-fi cards, and some kind of driver that would load-balance them... it aint gonna happen lol.. besides, if you have 3xstrong wifi signals and your trying to use all three at once, your sure to get interferance and the throughput would drop.

unless you use channel 1, 5/6 and 11? to make sure the signals aren't overlapping?

Basically get your own Internet connection and stop trying to use all your neighbours' connections ... all at once

^ lol - what he said!

This would be what 802.11N does with channel bonding for combining WIFI, however it does it to a single access point.

The ISP doesn't need to do anything, however as stated you would need 3 wireless cards (ideally on channels 1, 6 and 11) talking to three wireless routers. There would then need to be an abstraction layer between your TCP/IP stack and the wireless drivers that would do load balancing and send requests for different packets to the least congested wifi link.

This wouldn't take any consideration of the load of the ADSL etc connection behind the wifi and that would require a firmware mod in the wifi base station and the driver on the PC.

HTH

??? lol

If you are trying to increase your bandwidth to 1536k download speed; just check with your ISP if you can have a better service than 512k.

Combining 'channels' in order to increase bandwidth has never been done before, IMO because there is no need for it, but you can bet your bottom that if it needs happening it will be possible.

It happens in mobile networks, can't see any reason why it would not happen in wireless networks.

The ISP doesn't need to do anything

It would in order for proper bonding like was done in the ISDN days. Otherwise you're obviously limited to one ADSL connection for any TCP stream. If you're downloading three things simultaneously then that's OK, but if you're trying to get just one file then a solution which didn't involve your ISP wouldn't help at all.

That's quite apart from the applications which expect seqential requests from a single user to come from the same IP.

It would in order for proper bonding like was done in the ISDN days. Otherwise you're obviously limited to one ADSL connection for any TCP stream. If you're downloading three things simultaneously then that's OK, but if you're trying to get just one file then a solution which didn't involve your ISP wouldn't help at all.

That's quite apart from the applications which expect seqential requests from a single user to come from the same IP.

But unlike ISDN, the wireless is packetised not switched network, so you can throw packets anywhere you like and rebuild it at your end.

The packets can all take individual routes over the internet routers anyway so it will make no odds.

I might be wrong but I believe ADSL is still a connection oriented switched network. therefore just throwing packets at it will not work

If you're gonna do this, you will need Frame Relay, between your end and the ISP's side where packets will be re-assembled.

The packets can all take individual routes over the internet routers anyway so it will make no odds.

You can't sent two packets in a TCP connection with sequential TCP sequence numbers from different public IP addresses and expect any Internet server to have the slightest idea what's going on.

You can't combine Wi-Fi connections but you can combine multiple ADSL connections for Load Balancing. So you could have two ADSL connections with ethernet modems connected to a load balancer, this device has a wireless access point attached thus sharing your connections.

I think!