Not a question you probably consider very often, but something that’s left me lying awake at night on many occasions.
As our demand for Internet Services increases, we’re slowly running out of capacity. Most small Hotels and cafes are fine with a single Internet Connection but bigger Wi-Fi Hotspots need more than this.
Get more out of your lines with our smart Wi-Fi Hotspot boxes. Because they slice the connection up, everyone gets a good quality connection.
Bonding lines is a method of connecting two (or more) lines together. This is done at the exchange and doesn’t necessarily require special kit on site. A few of our premium Wi-Fi Hotspot Customers use this service and we have been happy with the result. The problem is that you never get 100% capacity out of the lines – 2 x 10mb does not equal 20mb.
Leased lines are our preferred choice but the cost to install in prohibitive for most locations – a recent quote for a Wi-Fi Hotspot customer came in at £22,000 per year for a 4mb connection! But when there’s budget for them, there’s nothing that compares to the quality and speed of the connection. There are some great deals out there for 10Mb lines for £800 per month (still a lot though).
Our current preferred choice is to use a load balancing device to connect the lines together to give greater capacity. We’re currently using some new hardware that can connect up to 6 lines and costs under £600.
A load balancer doesn’t increase the speed of the lines however it adds greater capacity – if you can get 10 people on a broadband line at one time, you’ll get 20 on two load balanced.
Load balancing is hugely simple and you can use whatever broadband lines you can get your hands on. Best of all, our little Wi-Fi hotspot boxes plug straight in to the load balancer without any extra configuration.