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.
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.
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.
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
Speed using a single
Internet connection only
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.