[TriLUG] RAID notion applied to networking

[Pete Soper via TriLUG]

Hi Alan,

OK. I think our plan A will be to use DSL, B will be one of us to switch 
to a hotspot and the other keep off and C will be to use the two 
hotspots, because we have the same carrier and the booster is pointed to 
a single tower (hmmmmm, maybe D: remotely swing the booster antenna 
between the two towers in our area if that might give us two good 
connections). If we're contending for a single tower (antenna?) I might 
still mess up her work or visa versa. We notice when the whole 
neighborhood DSL goes down the cell performance goes out the window 
depending on the time of day (here recently more people are Zooming or 
whatever during day time than night). So there may be cases when we 
alternate between DSL and MyFi to avoid contention with the neighbors 
swamping the DSL.

But this thread was really to wonder if some sort of IP multiplexer 
exists out there and might be accessible via OSS. I guess for the 
majority of cases it just isn't an issue, especially for those of you 
with fiber who have hopefully stopped having to think about bandwidth 
issues.

Thanks to you and Mauricio (he privately mentioned LACP that does clever 
stuff, but not with a single TCP stream).

-Pete

On 5/23/20 3:41 PM, Alan Porter via TriLUG wrote:
>
> You can send your outbound traffic out two separate pipes.  But the 
> problem is your INBOUND traffic.  The remote end needs a single IP 
> address to send its response to.
>
> For example, say you wanted to "curl" the latest Ubuntu install 
> image.  You would send a small request out one of your pipes and the 
> entire ISO image would return through that same pipe, because that's 
> the address that ubuntu.com saw the request coming from. Using two 
> pipes might only pay off if you wanted to download TWO ISO images, and 
> you somehow controlled which one used which pipe. But you're not 
> actively managing traffic... you want to just "use them both as needed".
>
> The two pipes might also help if you were uploading more than you were 
> downloading.  The upload packets can take either path to get out to 
> the destination.  But the replies will always come to the originating 
> IP -- ONE of your two pipes.
>
> If you wanted a way to mutliplex your outbound and inbound traffic 
> over two links, you would need some sort of proxy on the internet that 
> would act as your internet-facing IP address.  It would split your 
> download traffic into two and it would combine your two upload streams 
> back together and out through that internet-facing IP.
>
> Alan
>
>
>