If your here reading this post you have internet connectivity of some kind. Whether it be dialup, ISDN, T-1, or some other form of broadband, you have probably experienced the wait for a download. Nowadays if you have cable internet, or you live close enough to the telephone company C.O. you can probably subscribe to a higher tier for speeds that will drastically reduce your wait times. If though you are in an area not served by cable or close enough to get the better DSL tiers, you are probably living with patience that users of the higher speed tiers have long forgotten.

   There's satellite internet solutions that can make dialup seem fast at times. And with the higher cost, much higher latency, and much lower usage caps, satellite is last resort. Cellular solutions exist but for the most part have low usage caps and higher cost as well. In some cases you can still subscribe to DSL but have limited speeds due to the distance from the C.O. or the fact that you are fed from a remote DSLAM. My office is a good example of the remote DSLAM connection.

   Our DSLAM is fed via 8 T-1 circuits from the Century Link central office in the town nearest our location. The areas covered by these remote DSLAMs are limited in available speed to 1.5mbps down and 896kbps up. Did I mention patience? For many years back to the day Qwest, the original phone service provider, turned up our area for DSL we have hoped for faster service.

   Not to long ago though I learned of a technology that is used to bond DSL circuits in much the same way the T-1 circuits to our DSLAM 1 mile away are bonded, known as MLPPP or Multi Link Point-to-Point Protocol. Whats needed is an ISP that can and is willing to provide the service using this method and a device on the client end that also works to provide it.

        What this gets you is the speed of all the links combined. So 4X 1.5 connections would get me a single 6mbps connection. And the 896kbps upload I have X4 would get me about 3.5mbps upload. Yes its means 4 dsl circuits but it might be the only way to get the speed you want without moving. In my case I only bond two for a 3mbps by about 1.5mbps connection.

   TekSavvy in Canada was the only ISP that I knew of at the time that provided it. There were others that I only learned about later. But in the U.S. the service was widely unheard of.

   Also- I learned that the particular router I was already using (pfSense) was capable of bonding DSL circuits via MLPPP. In fact there are users that have 6 lines bonded on their units. Other devices include Microtik routers, Tomato MLPPP version firmware, and others that I will update this post with as I run into them. Of coarse this means your modems are in bridge mode and the router does the login, but Ive found this to be better anyways. And I was able to get my local ISP to support it. That was key.
   
   Of course you need at least two DSL lines and more if you desire, to bond lines. Century Link is beginning to offer MLPPP in their legacy (non Qwest) areas on VDSL connections, but does not offer it anywhere else. However if you use one of the many ISP's that offer DSL service using Century Link connections, the possibility is there. This probably includes other phone companies such as Verizon and AT&T also but I have no knowledge either way.

   Another trend that is popping up is for companies to offer bonding service over multiple connection types. So whether you have a combination of services I.E. cable, dsl, wireless, ect. you can have those bonded just the same. This type of bonding sends your connections through your normal ISP's to a secondary ISP that provides the service. Accomplished by a VPN that is split apart and reassembled on the other end this type of connection has redundant property that standard MLPPP does not, as your different routes are more likely to not suffer the same types of outages at the same time.

   The nice thing about these types of circuits is just that though... They are redundant. If one circuit drops out for trouble issues, the other(s) stay active and keep your circuit live although without the added speed of the dead circuit.

   As I find them I will update my reply to this post with ISP's that offer MLPPP and multi connection bonding and cost if I can get it. If you know of any ISP's to add please do so. I believe the more ISP's that learn about this new possible revenue source, the more that will support it.

I was in the middle of a complicated order online for my business the middle of last year when suddenly my connection to the site I was on went dark. Turns out that a truck had turned to sharp and pulled 1800 feet of pole mounted fiber with it before stopping. Needless to say they weren't going to fix that real quick.

Before I knew what was going on I began to make a serious of ping tests to see how limited my new network was. I could reach several sites that I know exist on the NOANET network whom my ISP gets their connections from, but not any further. Luckily I could still reach my office over the VPN as the ISP that I use there also uses NOANET.

What really surprised me that day was how many were affected by this fiber string 6 miles away from my home. 911 phone systems at centers across the sound along the I5 corridor  had gone quiet. And three states worth of customers of my large cable ISP were without...

But also surprising was the fact that the VOIP phones at the office which I could reach were still live. If they had any down time at all I never saw it... Remoting into the desktop at my station there I was able to reach the rest of the world.  Very weird, I remember thinking... They must have a redundant route...  I later found out they did. By some quick changes to my firewall I was routing over the VPN and through my office gateway to and out to the internet. It was slow, but I got the order finished on time to get it shipped that day.

Another half hour of the outage I could of had email coming in also. But the fiber had been restrung before I got that far and I wasn't to worried.

What I later learned is that my office ISP, a small local hole in the wall establishment had not only an OC3 into NOANET's fiber (Actually NOANET manages PUD fiber in the state) but that they had redundant routes into the Qwest network. And while this event overloaded that redundant line, they still had connectivity to the rest of the world when my large multistate cable ISP fell down. To their credit the cable company sent fiber techs and bucket trucks to assist in the rebuild of that line... and they made sure that fact was mailed to all their commercial customers via a postcard about the event... But have we become that complacent? To run mission critical connections over single vulnerable routes?  Then when they fail, we pat ourselves on the back for being Johnny on the spot?  Its really the 911 services that went down that I worry about more than anything.

When I was growing up my parents had bought me a subscription to "Elementary Electronics" magazine. Even at 10 years old I had a pretty good understanding of electricity and how the power got from the electric meter of the house to the tv in the living room...   So needless to say I looked through the magazine from cover to cover the moment it arrived...

My favorite issue, and the only one I remember to this day, showed a modern kitchen of the time (1978) with a woman with dark blonde hair in a bun, dressed in a button up shirt, apron, skirt to her knee's, nylons and heels with a broom in one hand and looking at a computer screen and her other hand on the keyboard. The scene included a large dot matrix printer on a shelf next to the table and the computer next to that. Id hope my wife would look like that from day to day.  She doesn't and I totally understand why now...  And probably because I dont look like Fabio as I get home also... 

I can't imagine the authors or the readers of those articles though ever understanding what the future would become as they pondered woman storing their recipes, or the men of the households keeping track of vehicle maintenance, or banking records...  or visa versa.

But the prediction... Yes that prediction that many households by the next couple of decades, would own their own computer could not have been any better spot on...  I can't even tell you how many computers and related devices I have in the same room with me here without first counting them out. Then still I bet Id miss one or two. But I will tell you that my 16 port switch is filled. And I have a wireless access point that handles a few wireless devices in the house.

The point?  As we depend more and more on these devices in our day to day lives, and we remove ourselves further from the days of paper and relying on our outdoor skills, keeping track of our expenses and the little phone book next to the phone that would actually work during a power outage...  Would we be able to go back in a instant...  Could we still provide for our households and employee's if we lost the all important technology we have become so dependent on?

Keep this in mind. Things we buy have always gone up in price. Thats what inflation gets us. But the amount of things we buy and pay for are also increasing. 20 years ago, how many of us had cell bills and internet connection bills? Or "as seen on tv" items that we could call up and buy?   Don't know about you but my income isn't growing as fast as technology is.

I know one thing...   Id sure like to get a reprint copy of that magazine...

Need I say more

For the longest time AT&T has allowed email to go out for 3rd party and business on SMTP outgoing port 587 to reduce some of the abuse on there system..   About DEC. 28th they decided to block 587 and open port 25. That's great in some respects if you don't have over 200 computers using port 587. This was done to all customers from U-verse to DSL and it was fun getting calls from all over during the holiday season.
Altho for U-Verse customers your forced to call in and tell them that your not able to use Port 587 that you've been using based on there rules and ask for port 25 to be opened.. What they don't tell you is that they will hit you with a $29 fee to this.
NOW.... If your a AT&T Business customer with U-Verse and business Telco in more them one location or even at the same location. They decided to move the U-verse end to the business area finally.. But again this had to be done during the holidays.. That can make for some confusion for users.. So if you goto login to your account now.. Go to the business login and use the drop down menu to get to your "Business U-Verse..

I do Want to Thank AT&T for making New Years Day into a wonderful Day...
I'm sure this wont be the worst of it, as Congress revs up to mess up the web with a rule that won't work when they need to look at that set of rules closer.. and maybe concentrate on the economic garbage we're all in.
Updated see post.
HAPPY NEW YEAR