Aggregating an ADSL2 line with an SDSL can provide higher performance and resilience than a leased line, and at lower cost, claims British channel-bonding specialist Fluidata.

The company says that its PureFluid Burst service gives 22Mbps download and 4Mbps upload for perhaps £600 a month, plus installation fees. It adds that because the two circuits come from different sources - it prefers C&W and Telefonica - the service carries on working even if one supplier has problems.

Channel-bonding schemes have been around for many years, but most of them required you to combine lines from the same supplier, said Fluidata MD Piers Daniell. He added that while it's possible to have a second lower speed line as a backup, it hasn't been possible to bond the two together to create a single connection. What makes it feasible here is that all customer traffic is routed through Fluidata's data centres, where aggregation servers automatically prioritise and route packets based on the capacity of each line in the bundle.