Introduction

Combining your Bluetooth tether connection with your Wi-Fi on Ubuntu can significantly enhance your internet speed. This technique, known as bonding, allows you to leverage both connections simultaneously to achieve cumulative speed. This article will guide you through the steps to configure and use this method in Ubuntu, ensuring you have the best performance possible.

Prerequisites

To achieve a combined Bluetooth tether and Wi-Fi connection, you need to ensure that both connections are set up and working properly on your Ubuntu system. Additionally, you need to have the appropriate tools and modules installed. If necessary, you can install the required tools via the terminal:

sudo apt install ifenslave

Steps to Combine Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Connections

1. Identify Your Network Interfaces

The first step is to identify your network interfaces. Open a terminal and run the following command to list your network interfaces:

ip link show

Note down the names of your Wi-Fi interface (e.g., wlan0) and your Bluetooth tethering interface (e.g., bnep0).

2. Create a Bonding Interface

To combine the speeds of both connections, you need to create a bonding interface. First, edit the bonding configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

In the file, add the following line to enable bonding:

alias bond0 bonding

This creates a bonding interface named bond0.

3. Load the Bonding Module

Next, load the bonding kernel module:

sudo modprobe bonding

4. Configure the Bonding Interface

Edit your network configuration file to configure the bonding interface:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Add the following configuration, adjusting the interface names as necessary:

auto bond0iface bond0 inet dhcp    bond-slaves wlan0 bnep0    bond-mode 0

The bond-mode 0 specifies round-robin operation, but you can choose other modes based on your requirements.

5. Restart Networking

Restart your networking service to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart networking

6. Verify the Bonding Configuration

To check the status of your bonding interface, run:

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

This command will display detailed information about the bonding configuration.

Notes

Bonding Modes: The bonding mode can affect how the connections are used. Mode 0 (round-robin) is a simple way to combine bandwidth, but other modes may provide redundancy or load balancing.

Performance: The actual performance improvement may vary based on your network conditions and the capabilities of your hardware.

Compatibility: Not all routers and network setups will support bonding, or may require additional configuration.

Alternative Solutions

If you find bonding too complex or it doesn't meet your needs, you might consider using tools like NetworkManager with nm-connection-editor to manage your connections more easily. However, these tools may not provide the same cumulative speed benefits.

Conclusion

Combining Bluetooth tethering and Wi-Fi in Ubuntu can increase your internet speed, but it requires careful configuration of network interfaces and bonding. Make sure to back up your configuration files before making changes.