Speed Test: Maximize File Transfer Speed and Reliability with Channel Bonding

You’ve got massive files to send, producers and clients breathing down your neck, and an internet connection moving at the pace of a snail on decaf. What can you do to get your files to their destination in as little time as possible? Two words: Channel bonding.

Channel bonding combines multiple network connections for added file transfer speed and reliability. You can combine wired, wireless, and cellular networks into one powerful connection to send and receive files faster than ever.

But just how well does MASV’s channel bonding feature—MASV Multiconnect—work in the field? We’re going to test that today in a real-life workflow test, where we’ll also show how easy it is to set up and when to use Multiconnect to accelerate uploads and downloads.

Let’s jump in and see how Multiconnect can revolutionize your upload and download game.

• What is Channel Bonding?
• What is MASV Multiconnect?
• Channel Bonding Best Practices
• Getting Started With Channel Bonding
• The 10GB Multiconnect Field Test
• Practical Use Cases
• Use MASV Multiconnect to Accelerate Uploads and Downloads

What is Channel Bonding?

Kanalbündelung—also known as bonded internet, network bonding, a bonded channel, or Ethernet bonding—is the combining of two or more internet connections (such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or cellular) into a single, more powerful connection. It typically involves a primary channel and a secondary channel, and is a little like load balancing for your file transfer.

This is to maximize the total connection bandwidth by spreading file uploads and downloads across those networks. If you bond a wired Ethernet connection with Wi-Fi, for example, data is uploaded or downloaded through both channels at once—significantly accelerating the process and providing a failsafe if one of your networks goes down.

Network bonding is particularly useful when working with low or unreliable connectivity or when transferring large files, as it can prevent network bottlenecks that often occur with a single connection.

What is MASV Multiconnect?

MASV Multiconnect is MASV’s channel bonding interface. It allows you to connect multiple internet connections into a single reliable, high-speed pipeline by splitting the data you’re uploading or downloading across all your available connections, whether it’s a mix of wired, Wi-Fi, or cellular networks.

• MASV intelligently manages these connections behind the scenes, ensuring each one fires at full capacity without dropping data or causing disruptions.
• The feature is fully integrated into the MASV Desktop-Anwendung, designed to be user-friendly and automatic. Once you open the app, MASV does all the behind-the-scenes work to bond your connections.

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Channel Bonding Best Practices

There are three main approaches you can take when using bonding channels in general, and when using MASV:

1. Bonding wired connections

The most straightforward approach that leverages two or more wired connections. This is ideal when reliability and consistent upload performance are critical.

• However, since most workstations include only a single Ethernet connection, you’ll likely need to add USB or Thunderbolt adapters to connect additional network connections.
• If your workstation is a laptop it may have no physical network ports at all. In that case, USB and Thunderbolt hubs are a great way to expand your workstation I/O. You can even add multiple 10Gbps ethernet ports to a single workstation for even better upload speeds and reliability. Once those connections are established, MASV will see them and you can enable Multiconnect.

2. Bonding wired and Wi-Fi connections

Wi-Fi is great, but it can only connect to a single network at a time: You cannot bond multiple Wi-Fi networks unless you have multiple Wi-Fi network interfaces in the same workstation. It’s important to keep this in mind when trying to connect and bond multiple network devices.

• Public Wi-Fi can be slow and can even throttle you, especially in some large chain mermaid logo coffee shops.
• This is where bonding a wired connection can not only speed you up, but also help with reliability. While reconnecting to a spotty Wi-Fi network, your Multiconnect will keep chugging along on the wired connection.

3. Bonding wired and cellular connections

You can combine an Ethernet connection with cellular data from a mobile phone or hotspot tethered via Wi-Fi or USB, or create a hybrid connection that maximizes available bandwidth.

• USB offers much greater performance and reliability than tethering via Wi-Fi.
• This approach is especially useful for remote locations, live events, or situations where internet connections may be unstable or insufficient. Channel bonding helps balance and distribute data traffic across all the connections, providing an additional safety net in case of a dropped transfer.

When bonding multiple channels within the MASV Desktop App, you should always:

1. Use separate network connections: Any connections should not be on the same network. For example, if you connect to Ethernet and Wi-Fi from the same router or ISP, you could see slower-than-expected speeds.
2. Be mindful of network interfaces: You need an interface for every network you want to use. Want to bond multiple Wi-Fi networks? You’ll need multiple Wi-Fi cards in your workstation. Multiple Ethernet connections require a port for each connection.
3. Use your mobile device’s USB: Using a USB tether offers a more stable connection than Wi-Fi when channel bonding with a mobile device.

Getting Started With Channel Bonding

Setting up MASV Multiconnect is very straightforward compared to traditional network bonding—there are no command lines or utilities to run.

1. Just make sure each network you want to bond is connected to the workstation running MASV.
2. After that, click in the upper right corner of the window and select Einstellungen.
3. Once inside the Settings window, select Geschwindigkeit from the sidebar and check Enable Multiconnect. You should see all of your network connections listed and you’re ready to go!

If you want more in-depth help setting up Multiconnect, check out the support guide here.

The 10GB Multiconnect Field Test

This all sounds great in theory, but we need to see how this actually works in the field for a realistic understanding of Multiconnect’s performance.

For this test I’m going to use a package upload of ProRes LT files totalling around 10GB. Then we’re going to evaluate the upload and download results for each type of network bonding. Let’s get started.

Tools we used:

• MASV Desktop-Anwendung
• AJA System Test Lite
• SpeedTest.net
• MacBook Air
• 1TB USB-C solid-state drive (SSD)
• iPhone 15 Pro
• 1Gbps Wired Connection
• 1Gbps Wi-Fi Connection

Speed tests

We will first run some speed tests to get a baseline of each device and network. I highly recommend running a speed test using a realistic sample dataset before starting on any project where transfer times are important. In this case, each speed test was run three times, and an average was calculated from that.

Hardware speed test: The first thing we’ll measure is the speed of the SSD I’m reading and writing from. This a very important step that is almost always overlooked: You may have the fastest network connection in the neighborhood, but if your storage can’t match or exceed those blazing fast speeds, it may all be for naught.

Networks speed test: Now that we know our storage can handle the read/write speeds our network can deliver, we’ll test each network individually and then a combination of each network. We unfortunately can’t test the wired connection along with the Wi-Fi connection, since they both use the same router.

The upload speeds on the cellular network are exactly why we do these types of tests: It’s easy to see the disadvantages or benefits of each network for what we were trying to achieve (in terms of uploads and downloads). Needless to say, I probably wouldn’t choose the 5G network as part of an upload-heavy workflow.

But if I was working on a remote shoot and needed to receive files quickly, the 5G network would be a fantastic option to bond with a wired or wireless network.

So how does each network fare when bonded together, and we need to download a real-life package of footage?

Ergebnisse

The 5G mobile connection is clearly much slower compared to the Wi-Fi and wired internet connections, but keep in mind cellular networks can be affected by buildings, carrier coverage, and even the weather. I would expect more speed from this connection on a clear day.

• But when combining these connections using Multiconnect, the results show a significant improvement in both download and upload speeds.
• For instance, bonding the wired connection with 5G cellular increased our max download speed and upload speed, maximizing the combined potential of these networks.
• Meanwhile, the Wi-Fi + cellular combination provided a substantial boost as well, even if not as drastic as the wired pairing, which is exactly what we’d expect based on the performance of each network individually.

This hybrid approach provides great flexibility depending on your project’s requirements and available infrastructure. Channel bonding means you don’t have to choose between reliability and speed—you can blend connections to optimize for your current setup. For workflows that require rock-solid uploads in remote locations, a cellular network can bridge the gap or act as a fallback if your primary network goes down.

While each network has its limitations, blending them gives you a much more versatile solution, letting you transfer data in less-than-ideal conditions.

Practical Use Cases

So, what kind of scenarios and workflows benefit most from channel bonding?

Studio environments

Some studios rely on multiple ISPs to keep their offices running: One line for video calls and general office use, and the other for serious file transfers involving heavy files. Since we already have a good understanding of how MASV makes it easy to bond those connections to get even more speed, we can take it to the next level with bandwidth scheduling: You can bond connections together and schedule MASV to keep usage low during busy periods, then open it up again when the office isn’t busy.

Remote locations and live events

Sometimes you have to get out of your office and experience the world, and that means shooting on location. Unfortunately, most of the time that location does not have reliable Wi-Fi. Live events like music festivals and sports games rarely have readily available or even reliable internet connections.

Luckily, however, we live in an age of wireless 5G hubs, which can be used in remote locations to provide reliable internet access.

There are lots of ways to connect these hubs, such as through ethernet, USB adaptors or even Wi-Fi.

• It’s quite common to have more than one 5G hub when covering events, mainly for redundancy.
• But why not put multiple hubs or cell phones to good use by bonding them for both speed and redundancy?

Once you’re connected to these devices, you can bond them using Multiconnect and get the most out of these connections. 

Hotels

With remote shoots comes the inevitable hotel stay—and sometimes (most of the time) they aren’t exactly the Ritz Carlton. Most hotels have free internet, which is convenient, but it’s usually painfully slow.

But you’ve got footage that has to meet a deadline, and that trickle of internet alone won’t cut it—even if you’re okay with uploading footage overnight. But you can bond your hotel Wi-Fi with a 5G hub and/or mobile phone to create a stable and robust connection.

That means you don’t have to set an alarm every hour to check if your upload failed. You’ve gotta love tools that let you get more sleep, even if it is on a cheap hotel mattress.