How does LTE bonding actually work?

What is LTE bonding and how is it different from normal LTE?

Due to their widespread use, cellular connections are an ideal way to establish a mobile or temporary data connection in one place. Unfortunately, however, this type of connection is also subject to technical disadvantages. This can become a problem when used at events. With LTE bonding, not only can these disadvantages be eliminated, but significantly faster bandwidths can even be realized. But how does LTE bonding actually work?

The disadvantages of LTE connections

You're probably familiar with this. Just now LTE reception is good and suddenly the connection is agonizingly slow. That's because you have to share the available bandwidth on a cell tower with all the other connected devices. So if very few devices are connected to a particular tower on one day, the mobile connection is very fast. However, if on another day there are very many devices connected to that mast, suddenly you are surfing much slower at the same location. This makes it clear where the biggest problem with an LTE connection lies: You can't rely on it. Even if you establish a good connection today, it can look completely different tomorrow. This is particularly relevant for events. Because when the guests arrive, there may suddenly be no data connection at all because too many devices are connecting to the next tower at the same time.

Our solution - stable and redundant LTE reception:

To prevent this, we are using our multi-LTE case we rely on three parallel connections to different providers (Vodafone, Telekom and O2). In the data center, the signals are combined into a synchronous output signal using LTE bonding . If there are now fluctuations or even a failure of one provider, this can be compensated for by the remaining connections. And if all the cell phone towers on site are overloaded or mobile communications are not developed at the respective location, we can even use directional radio to target towers further away and thus simply skip an overloaded tower.

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The challenge with multiple connections

In data connections, the data is always divided into small packets, which are then sent one after the other. If the packets arrive in the wrong order or incomplete, the receiver can no longer process the information sent. File transfers fail and video streams experience dropouts and interference. This is usually not a problem when transmitting over a single connection, as the packets always arrive in the order in which they were sent. Completeness can be ensured by the transmission protocol.

 

If several connections are used in parallel, a number of problems arise. This is because the individual connections have different transmission speeds and response times (latencies). If the packets to be sent are now divided among several connections, it is possible that a packet sent later will nevertheless arrive earlier at the recipient. The result is an unholy mess on the receiver side, which manifests itself in disruptions and an overall unstable connection.

Also, many websites and other services that require logging in allow only one session per connection. If packets from different connections reach such a service at the same time, the session is terminated. As a user, you will notice that you are constantly logged out.

Our solution:

With our multi-LTEcase, we do not send the data directly to the receiver via the various connections, but to a so-called bonding server beforehand. This server sorts all the packets back into the correct order and then sends them to the receiver. At the receiver, all packets arrive in the correct order via a single connection. This means that multiple connections can be used for the benefit of fail-safe and faster transmission - without the problems normally associated with this.

 

Incidentally, the bonding principle can be combined not only with LTE signals, but also with normal DSL connections. This means that the multi-LTE case can also be used as a high-availability solution in office or event locations. If the regular Internet fails, one of the other connections is automatically used. These can be LTE or satellite connections.