[Update]Better then T1 Speeds for free

Over the past few few years the bandwidth that I consume seems to grow at an ever multiplying rate. With file sharing, video, multi downloads, oh and lets not forget bit torrent all being used simultaneously the meager 5mb’s down / 384kb/s up that my cable company provides just doesn’t seem to be doing the job. A friend of mine was recently had to tear down his datacenter because the cost of a true T1 just wasn’t affordable for him any more, but he had a backup plan. His plan was simply to aggregate bandwidth from two cable connections each with similar bandwidth to my own, his problem was simply how to accomplish this task.

After some very quick research I found the hawking H2BR4, a very cheap dual wan load balancing router. With this router my friend could now effectively aggregate the bandwidth of both cable modems (10mb down, 768kb up). I found this to be a very effective means to get lots of bandwidth at a very cheap price. But I wonder, is there a way to get more bandwidth for less money or no money at all?

For this project you will need the following:

(3) Hawking Tech H2BR4 routers 150.00
(4) Linksys WAP11's 160.00
(4) Permission from each neighbor you plan to use wireless access from
(6) Cat 5 cables (6 dollars?)

Total 310.00$

The design is extremely simple; in my neighborhood wireless is king. A netstumbler scan from my office reveals over 8 access points, and for a lot of people this is fast becoming the rule not the exception.

1) To begin setup each wap11 in client/bridging mode so that each access point connects to it's own wireless network
2) Using two of the hawking routers. Connect the wap11's to each of the wan ports (4)
3) Now using a single cat 5 cable, connect one end of the cable to the lan side of the hawking router connected to the wap11's, the other end to the wan port of the still unused hawking router. Repeat this for the other hawking also connected to wap11's
4) Configure all of the hawking routers so that they load balance.

Assuming all the wireless connections are connected to cable modem running at 5mb down 384 up. You now have access to a whopping 20mb/s down and 1.544mb/s up. All for free, except of course for your initial equipment purchase.