Is it possible to connect to several Wi-Fi points at the same time to increase the bandwidth of the communication channel?

Question

Computer networks

Is it possible to connect to, for example, three Wi-Fi access points with channel widths, say, 10 Mb/s, 5 Mb/s, 20 Mb/s, and as a result get a stream bandwidth greater than 20 Mb/s? If possible, how to implement it on a Linux system (if it matters, then under Ubuntu)?

Answer 1

what you want to do is called channel bonding, for tcp connections, the speed will increase only if you open several tcp connections in parallel each through a different wifi connection,
this means that for example, the speed of downloading one file via http in the browser will not increase, but you can start downloading several files in parallel and each of the files will be downloaded through its own connection.
it will also not work (so far, it will work on ipv6) to increase the speed of opening Internet sites - each site will transfer data to the ip address of your specific connection.
but you can increase the download speed of one torrent - it can use multiple connections.
what you want to get is called load balancing and in order for it to work in your case, you will need an intermediate server with a total upload speed from the server to you as the sum of all your connections, the incoming server speed can be the same as outgoing or higher.
at the same time, the delay (ping) of your connections should be approximately the same - no more than a 30-50 ms difference, otherwise the speed will only be less than that of one connection.
also, the latency from all connections to the intermediate server should be quite low - no higher than 100-130 ms, otherwise the speed will be low.
and the server itself should have a low latency to the sites that you open through it - also not higher than 100-130, google bandwith delay product and tcp latency performance.
you can rent the server from the host.
it is advisable to connect to wifi routers not via wifi, but by wire, because wifi introduces unpredictable losses and delays, if several devices are actively exchanging data nearby and the network signal level is very different, then the clients will interfere with each other - it will be difficult to make balancing more than two connections due to delay fluctuations.
you can insert several network adapters into the computer and set up balancing, or take another router, reflash it with openwrt / ddwrt firmware and set up balancing on it.
Also, you can try how bonding works through the connectify dispatch program.
and since you are talking about speeds of 5 - 20 Mbps - does your ISP offer you VDSL / PON?

Answer 2

1) all three points must be connected to one channel and be able to aggregate
2) for 3 points you need 3 receivers that can also aggregate

Answer 3

And where is the bottleneck - in the radio, or in the Internet connection points?
If in the radio, then you can connect to the _same access point_ two / three / four times in a row, this is called MIMO. The essence of the idea is the use of several radio modules on the access point and the client device at the same time.
According to the logic of work, these are already several wi-fi access points working in concert in one case.
But such a mode of operation, of course, must be supported by hardware on both sides - both the access point and the client.
If on the Internet, it's easier to stick all three uplinks into _one_ point, forcing it to balance traffic between them.
Or is everything simpler: there are three more apartments in the house on the site, everyone has unpassworded Wi-Fi, and the author of the question wants to suck up the Internet from all the neighbors at once? ;)

Answer 4

In general, the answer is no.