At ITEXPO Ecessa, a 40-year old company most haven't heard of, announced they teamed up with MyTELEPATH and NetSapiens to bring reliable SIP delivery over multiple broadband links to SMEs. I met with Ecessa to discuss the news and to find out more information about their ClariLink product which adds VoIP SIP redundancy across multiple "bonded" broadband connections.In a nutshell, ClariLink is SIP session aware and a SIP proxy / registrar that works across multiple ISP connections and will automatically failover in the event of too much latency, jitter, or an entire connection failure / outage. Ecessa measures latency, jitter, and connection outages and will automatically switch to one of the other connections. It also supports network optimization and will automatically pick the best performing connection when you initiate a SIP VoIP call. It can even modify the ISP connection on the fly during a VoIP call. So for instance, if your DSL connection fails , it will failover in real time to one of the other connections. You might have to say "hello?" but that's it. You'll be re-connected almost instantly. This is the first WAN controller on the market that is SIP-aware. In fact, this is one of the most innovative products I've seen at any ITEXPO!
Their product has huge implications for the SMB market since now a small business can deploy inexpensive cable broadband or DSL along with the traditonally more expensive T1 line which will ensure redundancy. This allows SMBs to deploy SIP trunks or remote SIP phones (teleworkers) without worrying about losing their critical voice trunks due to a single point of failure. Many SMBs are reluctant to deploy SIP trunks because they have experienced Internet outages due to a router, firewall, or ISP failure and have a jaded view about running critical voice communications over IP because it doesn't have the famous five 9s of reliability (99.999%). Ecessa changes the game and enables SMBs to add redundancy to their Internet and SIP infrastructure very inexpensively. They don't have to get a second T1 line. They can often get inexpensive business DSL or cable broadband which is much less expensive than a T1.
Ecessa Architecture
Their redundancy also works quite well with critical servers such as your corporate web server. I inquired about how exactly it worked since typically SMBs have a single web server with a single DNS entry. Switching to another ISP connection would require a DNS change which can take hours or days to propog Well, Ecessa is their own DNS Authority and they set the TTL (Time To Live) to just 30 seconds. So when a user connects to your web server, they query Ecessa's DNS server. On the event of a failure, Ecessa detects this and immediately switches the DNS setting to the alternate connection. The user will usually refresh and then get the new IP address. Ecessa said typically they see much less than a 30s outage - usually around a 10 second window.
Additionally, Ecessa today announced that telephony provider MyTELEPATH is utilizing Ecessa's ClariLink to manage multiple broadband links and ensure reliability of its VoIP services. MyTELEPATH has integrated Ecessa's ClariLink within its network infrastructure to provide SME customers with reliable and affordable VoIP service over low-cost broadband connections such as T1, DSL, and cable.
SMEs now have an affordable solution for SIP calls that will not be dropped when using low-cost broadband connections. MyTELEPATH delivers its VoIP services with NetSapiens SNAPswitch, a critical component to their IP telephony service infrastructure. To provide to its customers more reliability and failover of services, MyTELEPATH selected ClariLink due to these capabilities and its ability to work seamlessly with the NetSapiens solution. Before being deployed to the network, Ecessa's ClariLink was tested for interoperability with the SNAPswitch to ensure that the products worked together successfully.
By adding ClariLink to MyTELEPATH's VoIP network, SIP traffic is able to be deployed reliably across multiple network connections for redundant connectivity and automatic real-time failover to existing customers as well as to customers located in rural areas of the country.
"ClariLink allows MyTELEPATH and our partners to provide robust, cost-effective business-class voice service over multiple broadband providers, while ensuring reliable call delivery, even if a service provider has an outage. With this new extended service capability we expect to be successful in both rural and dense markets," states Tom Drill, vice president of business development at MyTELEPATH. "Our goal is to give our SME customers feature rich, affordable and reliable IP Telephony service over low-cost broadband connections, giving them a similar experience to using a high-cost dedicated circuit. By achieving this, we will have successfully accomplished our goal, to deliver leading communication solutions to our partners nationally even in previously difficult opportunities. Diverse paths for mission-critical IP voice is here today".
Deploying VoIP over broadband connections can be challenging. It is critical to make sure that calls are always connected with the IP telephony service provider. While many large enterprises can afford more expensive high-performance leased-lines to support VoIP and media-rich applications, SMEs need affordable alternatives that deliver the reliability they require, in the event that their primary Internet connection fails.
"Our customers' businesses are built around voice applications," said Jim Murphy, NetSapiens' VP of Business Development. "We engineer our SNAPsolution to provide carriers, broadband service providers and enterprise customers with mission-critical voice services with the up-time and flexibility they require. ClariLink's ability to provide real-time WAN link failover for SIP-based applications is a powerful compliment to our redundant and highly available platform."
ClariLink guarantees SIP call integrity by ensuring that all traffic persists to the correct destination, providing real-time session failover. By intelligently directing SIP traffic among multiple Internet connections, ClariLink eliminates a critical point-of-failure. "We are very excited to work with MyTELEPATH and NetSapiens to help bring this unique telephony service offering to market," states Ron Thomas, CEO at Ecessa. "This hosted telephony service is a perfect fit that meets the needs of SME customers. For telephony providers such as MyTELEPATH, ClariLink provides the ability to offer voice network optimization not previously available to SMEs, while creating new revenue generating opportunities. Similarly, working with NetSapiens, we hope to deliver affordable technology to other telephony providers. We also view this as an opportunity to use this example as a proof point to expand our relationship with NetSapiens within their service platform environment."
I hope to review a ClariLink WAN Link controller soon using a T3 and a cable broadband connection along with our SIP-based IP-PBX to test it with. They're sending me an eval unit soon. I for one wasn't familiar with Ecessa until now. Once again ITEXPO never fails to educate me, even though I consider myself well-educated on the VoIP industry. From what I've seen, this product seems a no-brainer and I expect them to do quite well once more people learn about them.
