bandwidth multipliers

[CatT]

TV cameraman last night mentioned that travelling reporters nowadays use some sort of 1-to-16 converter to upload video via 16 parallel wifi connections. why can't i do this?

as i struggle to download at w/e speed the server (cafe/library) offers me, it occurs to me that there are 30 other people doing likewise. so it's not a TOTAL speed problem, it's just how much it offers my one connection.

can't i log in via 2 parallel wifis and have some sort of software add the signals? what about with 20?

does this concept exist and what is it called? are there, in fact, laptops which come with "dual wifi" or the like?

would the onboard antennae interfere with each other? doesn't seem to be a problem for the professional reporter above, but then again his equipment is so much bigger than a laptop that i guess things can spread out a lot more.

[Colemanguy]

It boils down to cost, and lack of people willing to pay for it.

[CatT]

but does it EXIST? either a laptop with "dual wifi" (or some appropriate term) or a gadget i can plug in and double my take of the signal? i for one would certainly pay 50 bucks more for double speed! (and wouldn't it be more like 8 bucks for a built-in one, aniwes?).

come to think of it, i have a wifi CARD (plug-in) from my previous laptop which lacked a built-in one. can i actually use it on the new PC somehow without it disabling the default, onboard, one?

the PC is dual-core, so in theory i could direct one app to use one antenna and another app to use the other, right?

nah, i imagine there are other pieces missing interface-wise, but it seems an easy thing to do. "dual wifi", izzat what i should be searching for?

[Colemanguy]

Its not that simple, the os has to understand how to load/split the two connections to be used as one. Which involves specialized drivers and so on. I dont think theres an easy way around this with home user level gear.

[CatT]

yeah, i figured there was more to it as an end-user. but it must be easy for a MANUFACTURER (and/or OS writer) to implement, no? with a little redesign -- and what, 8 bucks more of components? -- they could advertise "double speed wifi" in one fell swoop. that's gotta be worth another $50 or $100 in retail price.

they're already thinking along similar lines with the whole "multi core" strategy. but for most people internet speed is where the bottleneck is -- how often do most of us run into speed issues with PC apps themselves? super-hyper-extra-fast CPU is meaningless for most of us once we're offline.

i bought a cheapo laptop for $350, tho i considered the better specs of the ones in the $650 range. if one of those specs had been "10x faster internet", they'd have sold even this skinflint!

[Colemanguy]

Wifi at g speeds of 54 meg, is faster then probably 85% of peoples internet speed at home these days. The bottleneck in internet speeds is usually the internet coming into the home. In my experience doing video live streaming, we use multiple connections/bond connections to improve reliability not speed. Usually we use wifi or hardwired Ethernet at the building, then use 3g/4g as a backup. This costs us a fair amount though, and we only do it if its critical to be on air. Most shows we live stream are deemed of less importance, so if we have to we just drop streaming and re air later the video later. For home users, its just too much hassle, and in most cases wont offer any improvement as its the internet connection into the building, not the wifi speed. So adding a second wifi connection wont help, and with windows can even slow things down as it takes more cpu to split traffic between the two connections.