20 Mbps ADSL Solution

An ADSL Channel-Bonding solution was recently launched in South Africa promising speeds of up to 20 Mbps to customers.
Technology Concepts (TC) recently launched an ADSL Channel-Bonding solution where up to 5 ADSL lines can be bonded together to create a high speed link capable of significantly faster upload and download speeds than standard ADSL solutions.
This solution is not the same as ADSL load balancing where traffic is balanced between multiple ADSL lines to increase speed and offer some redundancy. It is rather a system where packets are sent simultaneously over all the ADSL connections and ‘reconfigured’ in the company’s data centre before sending them on to the Internet.
TC currently has servers in the Verizon data centre, but they are planning an additional server set at Internet Solutions for redundancy and a possible improvement in performance.
According to TC Managing Director Wayne de Nobrega this solution, which allows a maximum of five ADSL lines to be channel bonded, promises significantly higher download and upload speeds than current solutions.
De Nobrega says that TC provisions its own backhaul bandwidth – 100 Mbps local bandwidth and 100 Mbps international bandwidth over SAT3 – to ensure the optimal performance of the service.
The TC MD says that current ADSL services typically have bandwidth bottlenecks somewhere along the line which hampers the performance of an ADSL service. This is something which his company tries to alleviate with their offering.
De Nobrega points out that this product is not aimed at the consumer market but rather larger organizations looking at replacing expensive Diginet links.
Actual performance
MyBroadband had the opportunity to take the service for a test drive and the results were encouraging.
A standard Microsoft download using a system of 3 ADSL lines provided a relatively constant download speed of around 8 Mbps (1 000 KB/s).
A web based speed test – using Speedtest.net – produced a download speed of 8 196 Kbps and an upload speed of 854 Kbps. The similar SpeakEasy speed test using United States based servers gave a download speed of 2 353 Kbps and an upload speed of 768 Kbps.
According to De Nobrega the higher upload speeds – which are limited to 384 Kbps on current 4 Mbps connections – is one of the biggest advantages to business clients. De Nobrega points out that businesses often need to send large amounts of data and need a more symmetrical data solution than the current ADSL offerings in the market.
There were however a few tests that did not produce very impressive results. These included downloads from Apple.com and even the SAIX servers which generally ranged between 2 000 Kbps and 4 000 Kbps. Other local and international downloads, using a multi-threaded download manager and a 4 line ADSL solution, however showed speeds of close to 10 Mbps.
Streaming multiple videos from international servers at 1.5 Mbps did not pose any problem and multiple YouTube videos could be streamed without ever having to buffer.
Latency on the system was fair when accessing local servers and good when pinging international servers.
The average latency to Google.com was 226 ms while BBC was slightly better at an average of 205 ms. The US based Chessclub.com however produced a higher average of 349 ms.
Local ping times ranged between 51 ms for IOL and 46 ms to MyADSL. The ping time accessing a server in the same data centre as the TC point-of-presence was on average 20 ms.
Price
The price for the system is significantly higher than standard ADSL offerings, but De Nobrega points out that this product is definitely not aimed at home or SOHO owners. It targets larger companies who want to reduce their Diginet expenses.
A 2 port system, which channel-bonds two 4 Mbps ADSL lines, costs R1 450-00 per month excluding VAT. This increases to R 1 700-00 for 3 ports, R 2 150-00 for 4 ports and R 2 400-00 for the top-of-the-range 5 port solution.
Users of this system must also purchase Internet bandwidth from TC, and prices range from R 1 340-00 (ex VAT) for 10 GB to R 11 260-00 (ex VAT) for 100 GB.
A cheaper local-only solution, aimed at inter-branch connectivity, is also available at R 1 990-00 (ex VAT) for 100 GB. This traffic is however measured at both ends of the solution which gives an effective monthly usage of only 50 GB.
The users will still have to factor in the cost of the multiple ADSL lines to Telkom which costs around R 525-00 per month per line if the compulsory analogue line rental charge is included.
A 20 Mbps system, which makes use of five 4 Mbps ADSL lines, will therefore amount to a cost of R 2 624-50 to Telkom and R 2 736-00 to TC. This cost excludes bandwidth charges ranging from just over R 1 000-00 to over R 10 000-00 depending on usage.
De Nobrega says that while the initial cost may seem high when compared to a standard ADSL service, it is far cheaper than current Diginet solutions which many companies are using. Source: mybroadband.co.za