Broadband pricingMonthly Inc VAT. See VAT Exc.
| Up to: | 8Mb/s | 8Mb/s | 24Mb/s* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tariff | Std | Prem | ADSL2+ |
| A | £18.99 | £31.00 | £17.95 |
| C | £26.99 | £39.00 | £26.95 |
| D | £34.99 | £47.00 | £32.95 |
| E | £46.99 | £59.00 | £38.95 |
Setup £59.99 Full tariff list The package Max *ADSL2+ trial Extra charges
Availability
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You can use multiple ADSL lines at the same location to provide an enhanced service offering additional resilience and performance/speed.
With our usage based tariffs, each additional line at the same site with the full speed of your main line is only £22.98/mon per line per month (Max Premium). All of the lines on the same base login have their usage aggregated, so you can use the extra line as a backup or load share over multiple lines to make use of extra capacity. For a lower fee of £12.76/mon, the extra line can be provided as a Max Standard connection with lower uplink.
Each line needs at least a broadband router/modem. However, our multi line services do not require a special multi line router or MLPPP features. For uplink bonding or tunnelling we recommend the use of the FireBrick 105, but other products may be able to provide the same functions and we will be happy to configure your IP addresses, etc. to work with other equipment if necessary.
It is important to realise that muli line bonding like this will not work with NAT built in to the broadband routers. The routers used must be simple routers and must not try and state track or filter traffic as they will each only see part of the streams of traffic. We have identified that some makes of router tamper with port numbers on some traffic even when not using NAT mode, which will not work in a multiple line configuration. Routers we supply are tested to work in this configuration.
Each line has its own WAN address, i.e. the external IP address of the router. This allows this to be pinged (from outside or inside of your network) to confirm the link it up for that line.
We normally provide a /29 (6 usable addresses) for the connection between each router and your own firewall. Each router having a unique IP address within that subnet and a static route for any additional LAN blocks your require pointing to your firewall WAN side address on that subnet.
We can also route blocks of IP6 addresses to your lines, either natively (if you have a compatible broadband router) or tunnelled via an IP4 address, which can be different for each /64 block. These can also be to multiple lines allowing bonding of IP6 traffic as well as IP4.
If one of the lines fails, our latest routers can detect this within around 10 seconds and ensure your service is using only working lines for all traffic. Using something like a FireBrick, you can do the same at your end. Fallback arrangements are normally combined with bonding or load balancing allowing you to make use of the extra capacity of extra lines as well as extra resilience. We can configure more sophisticated fallback arrangements were necessary. You can also use 0845 dialup (including ISDN) and obtain your same IP addresses.
Bonding lines has in the past achieved the sort of speed increase you would expect by adding the speed of the lines. E.g. two 2Mb/s lines can get close to 4Mb/s. As you add more lines the benefits do not increase quite as expected, as issues such as packet reordering can play an increasing part. We have found that three of four 2Mb/s lines can be very effective.
However, with Max, lines can be up to 7.15Mb/s downlink. Four of these would be over 28Mb/s. At these speeds there are more issues.
One issue is the TCP/IP settings which can be a problem achieving the maximum speed on a single file transfer. These relate to window sizes at both ends of the link.
A potentially more serious issue is contention within the BT network. Some smaller exchanges may only have 10Mb/s backhauls, and it does not matter how many Max lines you have you won't be able to squeeze blood out of a stone. We do expect BT will upgrade network links which are reaching capacity in time, but it is quite possible that bonded Max lines cannot go as fast as you would like.
The good news is that Max line bonding does have benefits... Firstly, you will get a bigger share of the bandwidth if you have more lines. To get an even bigger share you can use Max Premium rather than Standard lines. Also, the uplink bondes well and is rarely unable to get the full line speed even on several lines at once. Of course bonded lines also provide resillience against single line failures.
An ADSL line normally allows up to 400Kb/s or 800Kb/s of uplink (i.e. information from your network to the internet). The max IP rate is up to 750Kb/s. Using a FireBrick 105 you can make use of 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 ADSL lines to carry traffic from your network at up to 4.5Mb/s. Our network allows you to send packets from your block of IPs via any of your lines. You can use multiple lines (as above) to provide both fallback and bonded uplink offering 500Kb/s on two lines. Using the profiles feature on the FireBrick you can monitor each line and fall back to fewer lines if there is a problem.
Using a FireBrick 105 you could use multiple ADSL lines, each with different addresses. Traffic from your network can be randomly sent to any of the lines and use address translation (NAT) to come from the address on that line. This means the responses come back down that line and so allow you to share the load with sessions going to any of the lines. This means any individual session (e.g. web site or email) will not exceed the speed of one line, but overall an office full of people can use the total aggregate capacity of multiple lines. Using the FireBrick 105 you can monitor any lines that have any problems and exclude them from the load sharing so as to provide additional resilience as well. Regardless of which lines are used, a set of lines at one site can share the same usage based tariff.
We offer a bonded downlink service. This allows any number of lines to share the load of a block of IP addresses automatically. With no special equipment at your end you can use many lines to receive traffic allowing speeds such as 8Mb/s or even 10Mb/s on ordinary broadband lines. If any line fails we fall back to the remaining lines quickly and automatically. We recommend using the FireBrick to do the same for uplink bonding and so allow resilience as well. It is worth noting that with the latency of a broadband line many computer operation system settings make it difficult to get speeds at 8Mb/s or more, but multiple users or transfers are once would fill the capacity of many lines.
With Max lines allowing transfers of up to 7.15Mb/s per line, bonding Max lines for download is likely to reach limits on the FireBrick itself (typically around 10Mb/s not tunnel bonded). FireBrick developers are working on ways to handle higher bandwidths for such cases in the future.
The FireBrick can also provide bonding over multiple tunnels, so it could for example bond 3 x 2Mb/s lines to achieve speeds close to 6Mb/s. This requires a FireBrick at both ends as in the above example. Do discuss your requirements with us for more detail. Typically a maximum of 8Mb/s would be sensible for bonding tunnels. However the links being bonded been not all be the same, and could even be a different ISP.
