[TriLUG] RAID notion applied to networking

[Alan Porter via TriLUG]

Lots of folks are bringing up "bonding", which is used a lot in data 
centers when you want a super high-bandwidth connection between two 
machines -- and when you control both ends of the connection.

But the original question was about an internet connection.  How are you 
going to tell zoom.com to send half of your packets down your DSL link 
and the other half of your MyFi link?

John Franklin hit on the answer.  You have to have an internet point of 
presence that you control, and then you manage the two links between 
your house and that point of presence.  Basically you're running a VPN 
with a bonded link to that VPN.  The address that zoom.com sees is the 
VPN address, and your VPN takes care of sending half of the packets down 
each of your two links.


home<=========>VPN---internet---zoom.com


You simply can not make one TCP connection from your house to zoom.com 
and expect them to send the return packets down the two different pipes, 
just because you WANT it delivered that way.  The routing decisions are 
always made by the packet SENDER.

If you control both ends of the dual-link (your house, and the VPN), 
then yeah, you are always the sender, and so it'll work.  But like John 
says, the difference in the two home-VPN routes is going to make things 
pretty jittery.

Let us know what you come up with.

Alan