– Cahit Jay Akin, CEO at Mushroom Networks (www.mushroomnetworks.com), says:
As critical business applications increasingly move to cloud-based web services, Internet usage across the enterprise is increasingly stressed. An additional concern for IT departments is the consistent use of company resources to access non-work related websites, sites that involves streaming of content, which in turn degrades the performance of business applications. For those types of business cloud end users, connectivity performance is critical. When it’s not fast or snappy enough, the whole user experience is degraded. Companies need to discover new methods for managing demand on bandwidth resources because when not managed properly it can be very costly to operations.
Broadband Bonding™ is a solution that allows a business to aggregate various Internet connections into a single high-speed connection with built-in redundancies. It effectively blends the best attributes of different types of connections (DSL, Cable, and T-1, fiber) to reach higher upload and download speeds and lowest possible latency. Most operations still rely on older connection technologies, with employees commonly reporting faster download and application speeds when using their home Internet service. The substantial cost benefit for Broadband Bonding is it can be implemented transparently on existing lines, without any additional software or hardware beyond the bonding appliance.
When used in a data center environment, Broadband Bonding solves a key pain point for enterprises that need to connect various branch offices for VPN, cloud or virtualized computing services. Currently, most branch offices still rely on notoriously slow T-1 lines to connect to the data center. Although reliable, legacy T-1 cannot handle the deluge of real-time traffic and SaaS services that are now commonplace in businesses.
Once implemented, Broadband Bonding enables speedy connections between the office and the data center; it’s a high-availability service that allows faster file transfers, low-latency transport with advanced quality of service capabilities. It works by intelligently and dynamically managing any number of different broadband providers as a single pipe of connectivity. Older attempts at bonding multiple access lines together failed because solutions were not able to account for lines that functioned at varying performance levels, but new networking techniques such as Network Calculus have solved this issue.
Network Calculus is a core technology powering Broadband Bonding, an intelligent method for aggregating lines and optimizing them for specific applications. A research field in electrical engineering, Network Calculus is a unique in that when applied to Broadband Bonding allows for an optimized experience that pulls together the best possible performance matching the application. Network equipment that enables Broadband Bonding will provide features beyond fast and reliable connectivity – including firewall, traffic monitoring, shaping, and filtering.
Businesses with strained data center connectivity should consider Broadband Bonding as an inexpensive alternative for achieving explosive speed and reliability. Simply combining several DSL lines for example will deliver the benefits of services like MPLS or fiber at a fraction of the cost.
Dr. Cahit Jay Akin, is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Mushroom Networks, a privately help company based in San Diego, CA, providing Broadband Bonding solutions to a range of Internet connection applications.
