What is bonding, and why it matters

You want your stream to survive a dead spot instead of dying with it. Bonding is the trick that makes that possible, combining several connections into one so a single drop never takes you offline, and it is exactly what Super Simple IRL does on your phone. Here is what it is, in plain English, and why it matters when you are out and moving.

The problem bonding solves

When you stream from out in the world, you are on mobile data, and signal comes and goes. On a single connection, one dead spot is all it takes for your stream to stutter or drop. Bonding is what stops that happening.

What bonding is

Bonding combines several internet connections into one stream. Instead of leaning on a single link, your phone spreads the data across everything it can reach at once: its mobile data and Wi-Fi, and any extra link you give it. If one connection weakens, the others carry the load, and your viewers just see a steady stream.

Think of it like a road with several lanes. If one lane slows down, traffic keeps flowing in the others.

How it works, briefly

• Your phone splits the outgoing stream into pieces and sends them across every connection at once.
• A relay on the other end catches all the pieces and puts them back together in the right order.
• If a connection drops out, its share simply shifts to the others, live, with no interruption.

You never manage any of this by hand. Super Simple IRL bonds on device, and SSIRL’s managed cloud recombines the stream, adds your overlays, and sends it on to your platform.

Where the links come from

Worth being precise here, because this is where most bonding advice goes wrong.

A phone uses one SIM’s data at a time. That is true on Android and on iPhone, and it is a limit of the phone rather than of the app. Two SIMs in one handset gives you a carrier you can switch to, not two lanes running at once. Anyone promising you otherwise from a single phone is selling something.

So on one phone, your links are its mobile data and Wi-Fi. That covers the ordinary case, and it earns its keep every time you start a stream indoors and walk out.

For more carriers at the same time, add phones. Any phone running Super Simple IRL, on the same Wi-Fi network as the one you are streaming from, joins as an extra link and brings its own mobile data with it. You are not limited to one: several phones can lend their connections at once.

They do not have to be yours, and they do not need an account. A friend installs the app, shares their connection, and that is the whole job. No sign-in, no subscription, and they never see your stream: their phone forwards traffic without ever looking inside it. It is the same idea as the modems in a backpack rig, except the modems are phones the people standing near you already own.

SRT, SRTLA, and SSTL

This is the one thing worth remembering.

• SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) is a reliable way of sending your stream over the internet, but it runs over a single connection. There is no bonding, so if that one connection struggles, your stream struggles with it.
• SRTLA (SRT Link Aggregation) is the well-known, off-the-shelf way to add bonding on top of SRT. It spreads your stream across several connections at once. It works, but it is basic: it is slower to recover when a connection drops packets suddenly, and it does not do much beyond the bonding itself.
• SSTL is Super Simple IRL’s own bonding transport, built from scratch rather than run on top of SRTLA. It carries your stream across every connection you have and repairs sudden packet loss faster, with more features, tuned for phones on the move. What is SSTL explains how it does that.

Why it matters for IRL

• Fewer drops as you walk through dead spots and busy areas.
• No backpack to carry, because the bonding happens right on your phone.
• Cheap to start, since a spare phone on the same Wi-Fi can be your second link instead of a bonding modem.

There is nothing to switch on. The app bonds whatever links it can reach, so leaving Wi-Fi on as you head out is all it asks of you. See the go-live guide for the whole setup.

Frequently asked questions