Site-to-site channel bonding allows video, VoIP and other large files to be economically transferred across multi-office locations.

Plymouth, MN – September 15, 2009 – Ecessa, a leader in affordable WAN link controllers for small-to-medium sized enterprises (SME), announced site-to-site channel bonding capabilities for its PowerLink WAN link controllers are being used by customers such as Providence Engineering to provide greater bandwidth to transfer large files across the Internet. A form of WAN aggregation, site-to-site channel bonding provides continuous Internet uptime, while enabling organizations to utilize the full bandwidth from multiple Internet connections to support bandwidth-consuming applications such as video, VoIP and other large files transferred over the Internet.

Using PowerLink’s site-to-site channel bonding capability, Ecessa’s customer Providence Engineering is bonding two T1 connections (each at 1.5Mbps) to equal approximately 3Mbps, providing all network traffic with the combined throughput from both connections. The need for this level of bandwidth is critical for Providence users who need to download and back up large documents, and email drafting/CAD drawings across multiple locations.

PowerLink’s site-to-site channel bonding is a cost-effective option for SMEs that need to send large files, but can’t afford the cost and complexity involved in maintaining high-bandwidth connections. Bandwidth-intensive applications such as MRI files used by healthcare centers and graphic files used by advertising agencies may be sent over an open connection, or transferred through a VPN connection to remote sites. Transferring such files would require expensive Internet connections, if the Internet connection fails, file transfers are aborted. With multiple Internet paths managed by PowerLink, file transmissions continue even if an Internet service provider has an outage.

By adding additional Internet connections at a remote location, incorporating a PowerLink at each site, and bonding or combining the bandwidth of multiple links to increase the aggregate throughput – dramatically improves transfer times. Sending traffic between sites over multiple Internet connections utilizes the combined throughput of low-cost connections such as DSL and cable to transmit large files. This is a less costly alternative to installing expensive high-bandwidth network connections.

Another benefit for many businesses is redundancy. PowerLink’s site-to-site channel bonding allows for uninterrupted communication in the event of an Internet connection failure at any site. If a connection fails, traffic going to its corresponding IP network across the bonded channel will simply use a channel that is configured on a functional Internet connection. When the failed connection is restored, any channels configured on that connection automatically begin load balancing traffic. This feature is especially useful for businesses that have remote offices constantly communicating with servers at a central location.

“Our SME customers are using our products for site-to-site channel bonding to increase the total combined bandwidth, and have protection from network downtime. With built-in link redundancy using multiple network connections between the two locations they are able to create a virtual wide-pipe,” states Jason Breyer, vice president of sales at Ecessa.

How site-to-site channel bonding works
A PowerLink unit is installed at both a local and remote site, tunneling traffic over the Internet between the two sites using the combined (or bonded) bandwidth of multiple Internet connections. Each site connected by such a bonded connection is assigned a unique identifier that allows it to be differentiated from other sites. Each site is also configured with addressing information for both the local and remote end of the bonded connection. This allows PowerLink at the local site to identify traffic that should be sent across the bonded connection, and direct it to the specified IP addresses on the Internet connection(s) of the remote site. PowerLink identifies outgoing traffic and disassembles it at the packet level into separate streams of data, which is then encapsulated for transmission through the bonded connections. Since each encapsulated packet contains addressing information for a specific remote location, data is easily reassembled at that location.

In this example, each site has two Internet connections that are combined into a bonded channel. Sites are assigned a unique identifier that allows for differentiation between multiple sites. Each site is configured with addressing information for both the local and remote ends of the bonded channel. This allows PowerLink to identify traffic that should be sent across this connection.

Remote backup
PowerLink’s site-to-site channel bonding is also an effective method for backing up data from a local site to a remote site without the expense of high-capacity connections. Data to be backed up is simply tunneled from a primary site to a backup site using the techniques described above. The speed of the file transfers depends on the number of bonded Internet connections at each site. This makes it easier and more reliable to transfer data to backup sites that are used in disaster recovery.

About Ecessa
Ecessa is a leader in affordable WAN link controllers for WAN and ISP link aggregation, automated load balancing, failover and network security tailored to meet the needs of small-to-medium sized enterprises (SME) that rely on the Internet for e-commerce and business-critical application delivery. Ecessa helps SMEs rapidly grow their business with 24/7 network high-availability, optimized WAN performance, flexible scalability and secure access - while streamlining IT costs. At one-third the cost of other competing products, Ecessa’s PowerLink and ShieldLink deliver industry leading price/performance value. Ecessa optimizes WAN traffic for organizations of all types who wish to improve network and application performance and eliminate downtime for business-critical, time-sensitive applications. Ecessa uses multi-homing to connect a single LAN or WAN to multiple ISPs; enables quality-of-service (QoS) to prioritize network traffic that ensures the best possible bandwidth is always available to applications, especially during periods of congestion; and uses link load balancing and automatic failover to direct traffic to WAN links with the optimum bandwidth and cost-efficiencies. Over 6,000 companies rely on Ecessa to cost-effectively ensure that each application has the appropriate Internet bandwidth and availability needed to support user and business requirements. The company is headquartered in Plymouth, MN. For more information, visit www.ecessa.com, or call us at 1-800-669-6242.

WAN link optimization is also known as WAN Failover, Link Aggregation, ISP Load Balancing, ISP Fail-over, Multi-homing Load Balancing, QoS WAN Optimization, WAN Load Balancing, Dual WAN Routers, VPN Load Balancing, MultiWAN Switching, DNS Load Balancing, Application Delivery Optimization, Internet Traffic Management, Network Bandwidth Management, Bandwidth Aggregation.