It has always been a geek’s dream to have
the fastest Internet connection ever, and we bet you would desire the
same too. Almost all those who are hooked on to the Internet to surf,
download or entertain themselves would definitely be owning an broadband
connection at home. It could be via a telecom service provider, your
local cable guy or 4G wireless Internet providers. Some even own 3G USB
Internet dongles for their work and entertainment while being outdoors.
Most smartphone users today also opt for 3G Internet services on their
phones and tablets. All these connections can be individually used on
your PCs, laptops and handhelds efficiently.
Picture credits to Tech2 Download, set up and activate the utility
Though you can connect them all together on a single PC and access
the Internet, the Internet speed will be only drawn from the last
connected network, leaving the others unused. For instance, you have
four different Internet connection sources A, B, C and D. Your PC will
access Internet from A when it is connected. The moment you initiate a
connection from B, the PC will divert all network connections via B,
leaving A unused. The same happens when C is initiated; A and B are
unused and it applies the same to D. The operating system is not smart
enough and does not know that there are multiple Internet networks. It
needs help, but is unable to do so. In Linux, it is possible to do so by
tweaking the kernel, adding some modules and running some scripts that
will tell the operating system about the various active Internet
connections and balance the network load accordingly. On Windows, it is
not possible and a third-party utility is required.
Picture credits to Tech2 Single connection speed
Clubbing all your available Internet connections into one single
mammoth pipeline was not possible until Connectify, a well known
software development company which developed Connectify hotspot, a
virtual software router for Windows, stepped in. It kickstarted a
campaign to help collect funds for the project and achieved it. It
finally came up with Connectify Dispatch, a utility to connect to
multiple Internet connections for combined speed and reliability. Using
this utility, you can now connect all your available Internet
connections – be it from a DSL modem, a wired cable connection, a
wireless router, a tethered mobile phone or a USB Internet dongle – into
a single mega broadband connection. Read ahead to know how you can do
it in four simple steps.
Picture credits to Tech2 All adapters active and associated with Dispatch
Step 1: Download Connectify Dispatch and install it.
It is not a free utility and there are no demo versions available. The
utility costs Rs 5,114 for a lifetime license, which includes the
HotSpot Pro utility as a bundle. Optionally, you can opt for a one year
license for Rs 4,023, but we recommend the lifetime offer, which is
reasonably cheaper than this one. Once installed, activate the utility
and you can see it running, but not active, in the system tray.
System tray showing adapters activated and deactivated
Picture credits to Tech2 Speed using a single Internet connection only
Picture credits to Tech2 All Internet connections combined as a single large bandwidth
Step 2: individually set up and test all your
Internet connections on the PC. Install the USB dongles, tethered phone,
wireless network, Ethernet cable Internet, or whatever sources you may
have. Ensure they are working and all connected to the PC.
Picture credits to Tech2 Using only three connections
Step 3: Double-click on the Connectify icon in the
system tray to pull up the Dispatch user interface. Here you see the
Dispatch utility, which is not started as yet. There is a graph
available to know the bandwidth of all your available connection’s, and
the overall bandwidth speed. Also, you will see the number of active
adapters (Internet connections) in the lower half. Other icons available
are Hotspot (to start the Wi-Fi hotspot) and Settings (to tweak a few
changes).
Step 4: Connect, enable or start all your Internet
connections. Once all are active, hit the ‘Start Dispatch’ button on the
Dispatch window and you are ready to cruise the Internet highway by
utilising all the Internet connections simultaneously. The Dispatch
utility will automatically combine all the Internet connections
together, analyse each one of them and route the Internet traffic
accordingly whenever and wherever necessary. You can check the download
speeds by downloading some large file, video or torrent. You will
definitely notice a difference.
Picture credits to Tech2 Assign individual applications to select particular Internet routes
How we tested
1. Internet connection A – Tikona Wireless 4G broadband via Ethernet – 2 Mbps speed.
2. Internet connection B – Tata Photon Plus 3G USB internet dongle – Speeds up to 3.1 Mbps.
3. Internet connection C – Tata Photon Plus 3G USB internet dongle – Speeds up to 3.1 Mbps.
4. Internet connection D – Tata Photon Plus 3G USB internet dongle – Speeds up to 3.1 Mbps.
Picture credits to Tech2 Set bandwidth limitations for each Internet connection
The setup was done on a Lenovo laptop and was conducted inside a
house in the suburbs of Mumbai. The testing was done at night around 1
AM when we could obtain maximum speeds and minimum interferences from
any other networks in the surroundings. As we all know, the USB 3G
Internet dongles claim maximum speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps, but this
entirely depends from area to area. In our case, the maximum Internet
speeds we acquired was between 800 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps at any given time.
The Tikona connection was stable at around 2 Mbps. In all, estimating
the USB dongles gave us around 1.2 Mbps speeds and the Tikona Wireless
giving us around 2 Mbps speeds, clubbing them together, the speeds we
acquired was a little more than 6 Mbps.
Picture credits to Tech2 Override the default DNS
Testing and using the Connectify Dispatch for a few hours, we
definitely state that the utility works and can benefit those who are
looking for higher broadband speeds. BitTorrent is designed to make use
of many network sockets simultaneously, which makes it a perfect
application for Connectivity Dispatch.
Picture credits to Tech2 Select adapters to act as Primary connections or stay as backups
Other options possible with Dispatch
You can further tweak the Dispatch utility to benefit your work. You
can set up individual applications to use particular Internet
connections to balance the load manually too. In this way, for example,
you can download multiple files from Hotfile, Rapidshare, Mediafire and
other similar file hosting websites that have IP-based time limitations
to download the next file. It can also benefit those who want to
download particular files faster than others, such as torrents can be on
a faster bandwidth while smaller files can use the slower Internet
connections.
Picture credits to Tech2 Start Hotspot with a combined speed and share it to other devices
You can also use Dispatch to balance the load as per your will. You
can set it to keep particular Internet connections as standby or backup
connections in case any one of them fails. Other options available are
to use DNS servers other than the ISP provides you. You can use Google
or OpenDNS to your advantage. You can also meter individual connections
to limit the Internet usage so that you don't exceed the download limits
according to your plans. This can be done on daily, weekly or monthly
rules according to your download plans. Lastly, you can set Dispatch to
draw the bandwidth from the available connections that have the best
latency and reliability.
Picture credits to Tech2 An Android phone using Hotspot over Wi-Fi with full combined speed
Finally, if you have bought the Dispatch + Hotspot utility together
(Rs 5,114), you can start up HotSpot and share this combined
mega-Internet pipeline to all other computers and devices on the network
wirelessly or using a router.
Connectify Dispatch is a very powerful utility that can benefit small
and large business environments too. Take for example, a large
organisation that provides most of the employees with a USB Internet
dongle for use when they are travelling. When they are not travelling,
the Internet connection is wasted as they are lying unused and the
office Internet connection is used at work. By using these dongles on a
PC installed with Dispatch, the entire bandwidth can come in handy for
the entire office to have a faster Internet connection. Other areas
where Dispatch can come in very handy is for video chat, online
high-definition and 3D video entertainment, distributed or cloud gaming,
online backups and data sync servers, remote desktop sharing, and a few
others.
Source from: Tech2
