Enterprises increasingly rely on the Internet for delivery of vital components in everyday business operations. Poor performance and inefficient use of expensive leased lines leads to application downtime, lowered productivity, and lost business opportunities. Maintaining a reliable Internet connection to ensure the operation of critical applications is the key to business continuity.
AscenLink is an edge server appliance normally deployed on the border between enterprise intranets (LANs) and the Internet (WAN). It merges multiple WAN links into virtual pipes to deliver bandwidth aggregation and WAN fault tolerance. AscenLink also takes advantage of unused or standby lines by redistributing traffic to accelerate data transfer for faster application delivery.
AscenLink aggregates and load balances multiple links to effectively perform at levels usually associated with more expensive leased lines. It uses a policy-based approach to give network administrators the choice to route different traffic types to any lines, and allows bandwidth usage to be configured according to any business policy.
Patented Tunnel Routing technology provides link aggregation and fault tolerance over multiple links between enterprise intranets – ideal for delay-sensitive applications such as VoIP, VPN and video streaming. Tunnel Routing adds unique value to a VPN, allowing the VPN to use greater bandwidth across multiple links. AscenLink uses Tunnel Routing to create large VPN pipes from multiple smaller capacity links to effectively reduce latency, while providing fault tolerance and redundancy.
Performance
AscenLink aggregates multiple leased and broadband lines to increase bandwidth. It distributes traffic across multiple inexpensive ISP lines like DSL or Cable Modems to deliver speeds comparable to costly leased lines such as E1/T1 or T3.
Reliability
AscenLink provides fault tolerance for both inbound and outbound traffic to ensure stable and dependable bandwidth. It will reroute traffic if any connection interruptions are detected without interfering with VPN sessions.
Quality
AscenLink’s WAN health check and fault tolerance features detect errors across entire network links to provide consistent and durable WAN connectivity. AscenLink monitors the speed and health of each connection, while balancing traffic load and detecting outages.
Simplicity
AscenLink allows for easy and instant deployment without having to modify any existing infrastructure.
Lowered Operating Expenses
The multifunctional AscenLink delivers unmatched price/performance by integrating multiple low cost WAN links to perform on par with expensive leased lines. It effectively reduces ISP subscriber charges to a fraction of a leased line rental, while load balancing and bandwidth management reduces management overhead.
AscenLink’s key features include:
Auto Routing
For outbound load balancing, AscenLink’s Auto Routing directs each session or connection to the best available link. It supports policy-based routing, optimal routing, and traffic scheduling to effectively convert any business principle into network policy.
Multihoming
For web hosting services, AscenLink’s Multihoming features patented SwiftDNS technology, providing unmatched bandwidth availability by load balancing all incoming traffic across multiple hosts, multiple Internet access lines and multiple ISPs
Tunnel Routing
Tunnel Routing delivers bigger virtual bandwidth by breaking data down into packets while transferring over multiple links. This allows data packets to navigate multiple paths to their destination where they are re-assembled in the correct order. Tunnel Routing is commonly used to improve performance of mission-critical applications that normally cannot use more bandwidth than the single highest-capacity link available to them. Tunnel Routing lets applications such as VPN, VoIP and live video streaming utilize bandwidth across multiple links for vastly improved performance and reliability.
Bandwidth Management / Traffic Management
Bandwidth can be managed based on categorization of application, traffic source and destination. Bandwidth is then allocated to avoid wastage and critical applications are guaranteed bandwidth for peak performance.
Connection Limit
The number of connections allowed for each individual IP address can be restricted, for both inbound and outbound traffic. Connection restrictions will be triggered if the limit has been exceeded or a sudden surge is detected (such as malicious attacks). Connection Limit will minimize the effect of network intrusions as well as assisting system administrators with adequate information to take the necessary actions.
User Friendly UI
The UI effortlessly allows management the visibility to continuously monitor the network. The advanced and intuitive UI simplifies network management and provides the platform with uncomplicated and secure network administration.
LinkReport
AscenLink comes with LinkReport, the integrated reporting platform for network management and maintenance. It is a comprehensive diagnostic system that provides around the clock network monitoring, live statistical feedback, and warns administrators of any abnormal network activities.