Bandwidth aggregation combines two or more Internet connections and gives Internet applications access to their total available bandwidth and increases reliability with link redundancy. PowerLink, ShieldLink and ClariLink bandwidth aggregation techniques (also known as multi-homing) support load balancing to route Internet sessions from congested links, to links with more available bandwidth. They also provide automatic failover of Internet sessions from failed links to functional connections to eliminate the Internet as a point of failure.
Increasing bandwidth once required upgrading to more expensive single line access technology — for example, replacing a 1.5 Mbps T1 line with a 45 Mbps T3 line. Few businesses need an increase of this magnitude in one step; however, many need the ability to add incremental bandwidth capacity over time as business needs expand. Another disadvantage to simply upgrading a single line's throughput is that it still leaves businesses vulnerable to a single point of failure.
Bandwidth aggregation of multiple links can be used to increase bandwidth in a more gradual and cost-effective manner. There are two basic types of bandwidth aggregation. The older type, called channel bundling or link bonding, requires the cooperation of multiple ISPs and special routers that use the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The cost, complexity and difficulty in securing ISP cooperation of this approach (many ISPs will not support BGP for end users) eliminates this approach as an option for most small to mid-sized organizations. In addition, BGP introduces latency and performance issues that can affect the seamless and uninterrupted delivery of Internet traffic. Furthermore, many ISPs who do support BGP for ISP aggregation usually do so only for high-cost, high-capacity WAN links.
The second type of bandwidth aggregation maintains individual TCP/IP sessions on multiple links instead of bonding the links. This approach allows businesses to effectively utilize the total combined bandwidth of up to 15 different ISPs. This is achieved through a combination of intelligent load balancing, Quality of Service (QoS) rules which determine bandwidth minimums and maximums for specific applications, and other features. No special arrangements need to be made with any ISP, and any kind of WAN link (xDSL, cable, wireless, T1/E1, satellite, Frame relay, etc.) can be used in any combination to increase bandwidth. This approach allows businesses to aggregate multiple types of ISP links, avoid exposure to a single point of failure and add additional low-cost links to increase aggregation of bandwidth as the need arises.
Ecessa™ and Bandwidth Aggregation
PowerLink™ is Ecessa's family of award-winning WAN link controllers that provide failover and ISP load balancing that enables redundant ISP access, and provide both outbound and inbound ISP failover and load balancing for 100% uptime at one-third the TCO of other products.
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