Channel Bonding
A single internet connection is inherently fragile. Tunnely's Pro and Enterprise tiers unlock the Channel Bonding engine, allowing the routing daemon to simultaneously utilize every physical network interface available to your machine.
The Concept
Standard VPNs bind their encrypted tunnel to the operating system's default routing gateway (e.g., your primary Wi-Fi adapter). If that Wi-Fi connection drops packets, experiences high latency, or disconnects entirely, your VPN tunnel collapses. Your video call freezes, your secure session drops, and you wait for a reconnection.
The Tunnely relay-core daemon solves this by aggressively binding to multiple system interfaces simultaneously (e.g., Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and a tethered 5G cellular connection).
Bonding Strategies
The daemon can be configured via tunnely_prefs.json (or the GUI) to utilize one of two distinct multi-path strategies:
1. Performance (Speed) Mode
The daemon load-balances outbound cryptographic packets across all available interfaces. If you have a 50Mbps Wi-Fi connection and a 100Mbps 5G connection, the daemon will stripe the packets across both to achieve closer to 150Mbps of aggregate throughput. Data is reassembled seamlessly at the Tunnely Entry node before being forwarded into the mesh.
2. Reliability (Redundancy) Mode
The daemon clones every outbound cryptographic packet and sends an identical copy over every interface simultaneously. Whichever packet reaches the Tunnely Entry node first is processed; the duplicates are silently discarded. This guarantees absolute zero-loss failover. If your Wi-Fi violently drops, the packet sent over 5G still arrives, ensuring a live video call or VoIP stream never drops a single frame.
Bandwidth Warning
Utilizing Reliability Mode fundamentally doubles or triples your external bandwidth consumption (since every packet is duplicated across all networks). Ensure you have adequate cellular data caps before enabling this mode on metered connections.