MLPPP – Double your fun!

Recently the 1-year special DSL price from Acanac expired on my second phone line. Rather than renew at a higher rate, I decided to move the line to TekSavvy instead… since I already had the primary line with them. The price was about the same, but TekSavvy offered something I wanted to try: “MLPPP” connections: the ability to bond 2 DSL lines into a single connection, with a single IP address. The fact that MLPPP also circumvents Bells DSL throttling didn’t hurt either.

I ordered a second dry-loop connection from TekSavvy, and had them migrate my Acanac line over. Although I didn’t really need to, I got a second SpeedTouch 516 DSL modem to match my first: one less thing to worry about when troubleshooting:

Next I needed something to bond those 2 DSL lines into a single MLPPP connection. Although I was already using a Linksys WRT54G, I found another use for it over Christmas, and decided to buy an Asus WL-500gP v2 instead. It had aftermarket firmware, good reviews, and speedy hardware.


Speaking of firmware: the most important piece of the puzzle came from the Tomato/MLPPP project. They specifically tailor the normal Tomato firmware to be MLPPP-capable, and automate connecting and maintaining multiple links to your ISP. I installed an early release of “v3alpha4 ND”, punched in my TekSavvy DSL credentials, and both links went up automatically! Success!

I had some issues with my second Bell line (it was running at 3000/800 instead of 5000/800) but that seems to be fixed now. I have a bit more testing to do after Christmas (like fiddling with MTU settings)… but here’s a speedtest of the untweaked MLPPP connection using stock Tomato/MLPPP settings:

Just about double what I was getting with a single connection, and maybe a bit more with tuning. Special thanks to all the MLPPP-topic posters on the DSLReports TekSavvy forum for convincing me that things would work out.

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