Startup offers single-ended broadband bonding

A new broadband access equipment vendor making its public launch today promises to boost broadband speeds by bonding access lines of various types—including T-1, DSL, cable broadband and satellite.

Whereas some existing equipment in the market bonds lines of a common type—combining multiple T-1 lines for example—Mushroom Networks’ new “Truffle” offering allows service providers to bond any combination of different lines—DSL with cable, cable with T-1, etc. And perhaps unlike any other known channel-bonding approach, Mushroom’s offering is single-ended, meaning the equipment is installed only at the customer premises, not in the central office or elsewhere in the network.

The approach contrasts with bonding gear from the likes of Hatteras Networks, Actelis Networks and Ceterus Networks, which all require products at both the network and user ends. Even new entrant Sharedband Networks--which also bonds lines of different types--pairs customer premises gear with content delivery hubs in the region.

Mushroom’s currently-shipping product, the broadband bonding network appliance (BBNA), includes six ports in the network-facing side and four local area network ports facing the end user. The box combines the bandwidth of all access lines using existing IP technology rather than the channel-bonding standards such as 802.3ah.

“We’re not introducing a new PHY or MAC layer,” said Cahit Akin, Mushroom’s chief executive officer. “We’re using IP-based protocols to do what we call ‘network-layer bonding.’”

When a user wants to download a big file, for example, the BBNA sends separate requests for each network-facing broadband port--one for each section of the file, so that each section is downloaded simultaneously into separate ports, without overlapping efforts, and the file is reassembled in the BBNA. Thus, the user gets the benefit of the combined speeds of all the lines.

“It’s almost like a deep packet inspection technology,” Akin said. “We look into [user download] requests and manage them intelligently and send them out through the DSL modem line. When it comes back to us, we do the reverse operation and present it as a single connection to the office network. It’s completely seamless. I don’t want to call it a proxy-like approach, but it is doing similar functions.”

The initial product is focused exclusively on business applications, but the company may introduce residential broadband products in the future. As it makes use of multiple lines, it’s a tougher sell for the residential play, Akin concedes. But because it consists only of CPE and no network infrastructure, Cahit argued it doesn’t require much upfront investment and can be deployed in a less risky, success-based fashion.

“With our approach, you really don’t touch your network until you have a customer in the area, and the only equipment you send them is this customer premises equipment,” he said.

The Truffle BBNA, priced at just under $3000 each, is currently in trials with a handful of local exchange carriers of varying sizes in the U.S. and abroad, according to Mushroom.

Akin, who holds an Electrical Engineering Ph.D., founded Mushroom in 2004 after seven years with ITU Ventures. Several of Mushroom’s top management hail from the University of California San Diego, where Akin once managed the Adaptive Systems Laboratory.