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Bonding is a technique of combining data channels to form a higher-capacity data channel. Bonding provides a way to obtain bandwidth on demand without contacting the phone company. You typically use it to obtain more capacity before a high-data-rate session such as a videoconference. A router that supports bonding will dial and/or connect one or more extra transmission lines and combine them into a single channel. After the videoconference, you terminate the bound channels. The purpose of bonding (and bandwidth on demand) is to obtain more capacity without obtaining an expensive dedicated line that might go underused most of the time.

Note that bonding takes place when the call is set up. The phone company can also perform bonding within its own system for customers. In addition, most new routers support MLPPP (Multilink Point-to-Point Protocol), which provides automatic bandwidth on demand at any time and is more appropriate for bursty and unpredictable local area network traffic.

In the ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) environment, bonding refers to combining the two 64-Kbit/sec B channels to create a higher-capacity 128-Kbit/sec channel. BACP (Bandwidth Allocation Control Protocol) provides a way to do this in conjunction with the carrier.

Trunking is a method for combining multiple LAN links into a single data channel with higher bandwidth. Refer to "Link Aggregation" for more information.

Copyright (c) 2001 Tom Sheldon and Big Sur Multimedia.
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