What is BGP?
BGP, or Border Gateway Protocol, is the routing protocol that makes the Internet work. It’s pretty damn important. It can also be notoriously difficult to understand. BGP is required for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to connect to other network providers. Some large enterprises also use BGP to accomplish multi-homing—the ability to aggregate two or more broadband wide area network (WAN) connections from different ISPs, and failover traffic from one link to the other in the event of a service outage.
But Internet outages happen with alarming frequency, making automatic failover a crucial capability for all enterprises. Losing connection to the Internet means losing productivity, money, reputation and customers – and that’s not acceptable for a business of any size.
Thankfully, BGP is not the only way to accomplish WAN link aggregation and automatic failover.
Try an Alternative to BGP.
Most organizations no longer benefit from trying to implement BGP. It can be too costly, too cumbersome and there are just too many hoops to jump through. You should try an alternative to BGP because:
• It’s complex and difficult to configure.
• When it’s configured incorrectly, it can cause massive availability and security problems.
• It’s also vulnerable to attack by hackers.
• It’s wasteful, using only one active circuit at any time while your other links lay idle.
• It’s often sluggish because you have no inbound traffic control.
• It makes obtaining collections of Internet address blocks (ASNs) more difficult. You typically have to buy blocks of /24 prefix (256) at a time – if you can get them.
Deploy Multi-Homing without BGP
You can get all the benefits of multi-homing without BGP. Ecessa appliances accomplish multi-homing by using Network Address Translation (NAT) and Dynamic Domain Names Service (DNS) to direct each new TCP session. Ecessa WAN link controllers not only provide automatic failover in the event an ISP link fails, they load balance outbound traffic and inbound traffic for optimal application performance. This method is far less expensive and complicated to deploy and works much better than BGP. Ecessa devices let you use all your working connections all the time. It requires no special arrangements with service providers and no extra hassle.
To learn more, download our Multi-Homing Without BGP Report.