The Curious Case of ADSL Traffic Splitting
With stubbornly high prices and a crippling per-gigabyte business model, South African broadband has struggled to deliver the bandwidth-rich experience enjoyed throughout much of the world.
For those who can afford it, uncapped ADSL accounts have proven popular. Many of these, however, have usage thresholds, heavy shaping and other limitations that often throttle users to sub-broadband speeds.
Despite this, one can achieve high volumes and low per-gigabyte costs – but at a price. The total monthly cost for a 4Mb/s ADSL line and a suitable uncapped account starts from about R1 800 and upwards.
A large void exists between uncapped accounts and the typical per-gigabyte pricing restraint seen at the low usage end of the ADSL market. The only glimmer in the void is that uniquely South African novelty, local bandwidth.
Large ISPs like Telkom Internet, MWeb and Internet Solutions give away free local bandwidth on their standard packages. For the average user, however, these gifts are elusive; only accessible once capped. Very few take advantage since being capped means being without one’s favourite overseas websites.
Local bandwidth can also be purchased from as little as R4 to R10 per gigabyte, considerably less than international bandwidth. In addition to usenet and local peer-to-peer networks, there is a surprisingly wide range of local content available. This is where traffic splitting enters the stage.
In MyBroadband’s ADSL discussion forum few topics are more widely discussed. The principle objective of traffic splitting is maximising one’s broadband experience while minimising the cost.
By running two ADSL accounts concurrently, one can utilize cheaper local bandwidth and ensure that expensive international bandwidth is not “wasted” on local content. Traffic splitting works by introducing a table of local routes, so that traffic to and from local websites is diverted to the local connection. This optimisation can lead to significant savings.
Traffic splitting is not trivial. It requires effort to implement.
Various solutions exist, the most popular of which is Route Sentry, an application developed by MyBroadband forumite, ant1b0dy. As it requires only a Windows PC and a generic modem/router running in bridged mode, its main advantage is that just about anyone can achieve traffic splitting using this approach. The only serious disadvantage is that, in a network environment, the solution has to be configured on each machine, making it increasingly unwieldy for larger networks.
Another popular solution is specifically for routers running DD-WRT, a third party firmware that transforms a modest router into a networking beast with a feature set one would expect in much more advanced routers. A script developed by MyBroadband forumite, Gatecrasher, running on a DD-WRT enabled router offers a seamless experience. While one is limited to using specific routers (like the Linksys WRT54GL and Asus WL-520gU) the big advantage of this approach is that the splitting is “invisible” to the users of a network and none of the computers or devices on the network need to be configured to take full advantage of traffic splitting.
Perhaps the ultimate solution for those in the know is a virtual machine, or a dedicated Linux PC acting as a network gateway. Running a traffic splitting script and adding some caching software, one could further reduce bandwidth costs, particularly on larger networks.
What would a traffic splitting solution cost?
The cost of a traffic splitting solution can vary greatly. By way of example, assume one starts the month using Telkom’s Do3 as the international account together with an IS 30GB local only account. Once capped, the Do3 has another 30GB of local bandwidth available. Supplementing this with a gig or so of prepaid bandwidth (with rollover) should see one nicely through the month. In all, that is some 65 gigabytes of unimpeded bandwidth on a 4Mb/s line for a total monthly cost of under R900.
Traffic splitting provides determined users a means to break the 3 Gigabyte barrier without breaking the bank. With the arrival of new undersea cables, we may one day look back on traffic splitting as a curious oddity in South Africa’s uneven path to broadband nirvana, but for the time being it stands as an increasingly popular, consumer-driven solution for the cash strapped and bandwidth hungry.
ADSL Traffic Splitting discussion
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