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Satellite Internet with ADSL uplink

saajanb

Casual Member
Hi, I'm helping out some friends who've moved up to the peak district with their broadband.

They're on an old BT only exchange, with ADSL only. FTTPod is not available, as well as any sort of 4G/3G or even 2G signal. Their only option is 2.5mbit adsl which they have at the moment. They're getting about 500kbps up.
Bonding is an option but Openreach couldn't run a second line becuase there wasn't enough pairs on the cable going back to the cabinet.

I was thinking of load balancing a satellite connection and the adsl line, in order to provide a somewhat decent experience for video calling. I want the downlink via the larger bandwidth satellite and the uplink via the faster ping adsl. At the moment facetime via the satellite connection is barely usable but with something like this it should in theory improve.

I was planning to have three seperate wifi SSIDs, one for adsl only for data hungry devices like the sky box, one for satelite only and one for the satellite down/adsl up connection.

Is there any way to acheive this? My first though points toward some sort of MPLS link typically used for bonding.

Cheers,

Saajan
 
Technically you can bond a Satellite and ADSL connection, but it's tricky (partly due to the odd way that Satellite connections tend to be setup). I would think an SDWAN solution might work better here or a dual/multi-WAN capable router, but I haven't tried something like this in years so am a bit out of touch with it.

I also recall third-party firmware (e.g. DDWRT, pfsense) being capable of doing load-balancing on a Multi-WAN connection, provided you have a router model that can be flashed with it. But a lot of these may just give you two data streams, rather than a single merged / bonded style connection speed.

True bonding usually needs to be managed by an ISP or some other third-party. I recall there is a UK company that can do this (similar to Speedify below), but I've forgotten the name. Some other things to consider:



 
Hi, I'm helping out some friends who've moved up to the peak district with their broadband.

They're on an old BT only exchange, with ADSL only. FTTPod is not available, as well as any sort of 4G/3G or even 2G signal. Their only option is 2.5mbit adsl which they have at the moment. They're getting about 500kbps up.
Bonding is an option but Openreach couldn't run a second line becuase there wasn't enough pairs on the cable going back to the cabinet.

I was thinking of load balancing a satellite connection and the adsl line, in order to provide a somewhat decent experience for video calling. I want the downlink via the larger bandwidth satellite and the uplink via the faster ping adsl. At the moment facetime via the satellite connection is barely usable but with something like this it should in theory improve.

I was planning to have three seperate wifi SSIDs, one for adsl only for data hungry devices like the sky box, one for satelite only and one for the satellite down/adsl up connection.

Is there any way to acheive this? My first though points toward some sort of MPLS link typically used for bonding.

Cheers,

Saajan

Where I lived previously I looked at Satellite internet, it's not the same as what people get on ADSL/FTTC/FTTP. Latency is a big issue and I've read it's not good for video streaming etc, I would double check that this is the best solution for your friends.

With the low orbiting satellites being launched the latency will improve, by how much I'm not sure.

I decided in the end to wait it out, decided it was too expensive and much work for little gain. Glad I did in the end as we finally got FTTC to my surprise.

Though I have since moved and now have decent speeds, I feel your friends pain. Having a decent internet connection really makes a difference.
 
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A simple way you could do this (without bonding) is by using a router that is supported by OpenWrt and you can configure the router and SSIDs etc. to be entirely separate within one device.

So you can have your hungry devices connected on WiFi/ethernet to the ADSL connection and have another SSID and an ethernet port or two for your fast satellite connection. So you can connect your laptop or whatever needs the speed to the fast SSID and everything else to the slow one.

I'm OpenWrt could be configured to do as you said have one up and one down but that might cause a few issues with web services on the other end I would imagine.
 
Where I lived previously I looked at Satellite internet, it's not the same as what people get on ADSL/FTTC/FTTP. Latency is a big issue and I've read it's not good for video streaming etc, I would double check that this is the best solution for your friends.

With the low orbiting satellites being launched the latency will improve, by how much I'm not sure.

I decided in the end to wait it out, decided it was too expensive and much work for little gain. Glad I did in the end as we finally got FTTC to my surprise.

Though I have since moved and now have decent speeds, I feel your friends pain. Having a decent internet connection really makes a difference.
They need the satellite in order to get some decent bandwidth, mainly for video streaming and large programs, although that will eat up the limited data. For now it seems the best option.

Hi
This uses a microwave based system, I believe that the farmers and other country folk use it. I have also used satellite, it was ok, skype also worked fine, didn't do streaming though. Using both types (adsl & other ) may be a problem unless you have a capable modem.
We found a local WISP that covers the area but unfortunately they are in a valley so aren't in LOS of any of their backhaul.

A simple way you could do this (without bonding) is by using a router that is supported by OpenWrt and you can configure the router and SSIDs etc. to be entirely separate within one device.

So you can have your hungry devices connected on WiFi/ethernet to the ADSL connection and have another SSID and an ethernet port or two for your fast satellite connection. So you can connect your laptop or whatever needs the speed to the fast SSID and everything else to the slow one.

I'm OpenWrt could be configured to do as you said have one up and one down but that might cause a few issues with web services on the other end I would imagine.

This is what I orginally intended to do, but we'll have a third for just basic load balancing, I couldn't find anything that could acheive what I was aiming for. In old satellite internet systems, they apparentley used to use dial-up as the uplink but I guess Satellite is full duplex now so is not needed.
 
They need the satellite in order to get some decent bandwidth, mainly for video streaming and large programs, although that will eat up the limited data. For now it seems the best option.


We found a local WISP that covers the area but unfortunately they are in a valley so aren't in LOS of any of their backhaul.



This is what I orginally intended to do, but we'll have a third for just basic load balancing, I couldn't find anything that could acheive what I was aiming for. In old satellite internet systems, they apparentley used to use dial-up as the uplink but I guess Satellite is full duplex now so is not needed.
Yes, the one I used was full duplex, and I dumped the phone (which was costing about the same as the satellite monthly cost, and would have broken even after two years. Larger tariffs would have taken longer)
 
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