Ecessa announced Tuesday site-to-site channel bonding capabilities for its PowerLink WAN link controllers 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 customers can bond two T1 connections (each at 1.5mbps) to equal approximately 3mbps, providing all network traffic with the combined throughput from both connections.

PowerLink’s site-to-site channel bonding is a cost-effective option for companies that need to send large files, but can’t afford the cost and complexity involved in maintaining high-bandwidth connections. 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.

Bandwidth-intensive applications may be sent over an open connection, or transferred through a VPN connection to remote sites.

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.

To enable channel bonding, 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.