Get bonded
Johannesburg IT company Technology Concepts has come up with a clever way of connecting broadband ADSL lines to provide higher-speed connections to businesses. It has developed a machine, known as a channel bonding box, that “fuses” up to five ADSL connections, providing download speeds of up to 20 Mbit/s (five times Telkom’s fastest 4 Mbit/s ADSL offering).
Technology Concepts MD Wayne de Nobrega hopes small and medium companies will use the service to replace their much more expensive leased lines. There’s just one problem: whereas Telkom provides quality-of-service and speed guarantees on leased lines, ADSL is notoriously unreliable.
Technology Concepts gets around this, De Nobrega says, by providing a direct link into its network, instead of routing traffic through Telkom’s network, which is where the speed bottlenecks tend to lie as many ADSL users share the same bandwidth. Because Technology Concepts leases its own bandwidth – it has two 200 Mbit/s connections to the Internet – it is able to guarantee throughput for its clients.
The company makes the bonding box itself – it’s basically a PC with five telephone line ports and some clever software to run it. It’s designed to fit neatly into server racks in IT departments.
This is not a solution for home users, though. The service is much more expensive than normal ADSL. 60 GB of bandwidth from the company costs R8 356/month and rental of a five-port bonding box will set companies back R2 400/month. That might sound expensive, but compared with the extortionate amounts Telkom charges for leased lines, it can save companies a small fortune.
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