Multiple gateway options, greater flexibility and more reliability with PWAN
IDC predicts the SD-WAN* market will reach $6 billion by 2020. Gartner suggests that 30 per cent of enterprises will have deployed an SD-WAN by 2019.
*software-defined wide area networks
It seems everyone is developing solutions including carriers, software and hardware providers and bandwidth aggregators such as Fusion Broadband.
Potential users have to spend an extraordinary number of hours investigating the huge array of solutions to find the one that is the best fit for their business.
They have to weigh up the cost, the flexibility, performance, redundancies, the quality and reliability, customer service and control.
As of now, there’s only one SD-WAN provider that can offer the broadest solution across each of these categories: Fusion Broadband.
Fusion Broadband’s Private Network (PWAN) or SD-WAN comes out on top in terms of connectivity for businesses with multiple sites who want a private network at a fraction of the price of carrier based MPLS networks and what large ISPs can offer.
Jason Maude, Fusion’s CEO, said most hardware-based vendors do not have gateway options so if one site has an outage or limited capacity there’s nothing they can do. He said Fusion’s solution doesn’t have this limitation because of its multiple gateway feature.
Fusion PWAN provides the flexibility to have different types of PWAN gateways, such as centralised, multiple-site or one site, or even a datacentre. Fusion PWAN can also be configured to coexist with existing MPLS private networks. Through the PWAN portal, users can dynamically change their gateway and even the public IP address they use.
“One of the key benefits of PWAN is its flexibility and ease of use, allowing users to choose how their network behaves and how each site connects to the Internet. Configuration and setup is easy; customers virtually just need to plug it in. Others have a user setup and configure system, which is great if you have an IT department, but not so good if you don’t. Fusion is more of a managed SD-WAN service whilst also giving the customer control if they need it,” Maude said.
“Fusion’s proprietary and proven link aggregation (bonding) technology, node management and routing, allows organisations to build the most flexible private network possible. Fusion PWAN is more capable than MPLS and IPsec systems with options to increase speeds as well as build redundancy at any site by bonding multiple services from several carriers together. Users are not limited to a single carrier as they would be with an MPLS network.
“Bonding isn’t necessary to be part of a PWAN as nodes can be connected to the PWAN network using one connection or for more speed or redundancy, multiple connections.”
Fusion’s PWAN Quality of Service (QoS) system is able to be infinitely customisable per customer. This means that customers can set their QoS settings based on what is important to them, not what the carrier has set as a default. Data to specific hosted applications or their own cloud hosted server can be given higher priority over any other traffic types. Certain data types between sites can be selectively treated. For example, VoIP, RDP, etc. can all be given better classes of service. Users are able to choose the ports, IP addresses and protocol types that are based on their network not pre-set values.
Fusion PWAN can offer significant benefits over and above MPLS and IPSec VPN including customisable bi-directional QoS between sites and the Internet.
Unlike many other providers, Fusion PWAN can aggregate (bond) multiple connections across a mix of carriers at each different site to create the desired bandwidth capacity. And if one carrier fails, there is a seamless instant failover to another connection within 300ms (including 4G devices). Importantly, VoIP phone calls, RDP (remote desktop protocol) sessions, terminal service applications are not disconnected through a failed line event and the same static IP address is maintained.
Fusion’s technology provides data compression to deliver an enhanced speed beyond the physical capacity of the link. Certain data types can be sent up to 400 per cent faster than the link speed allows. This, combined with the aggregation of broadband services can create a robust, fast and redundant connection to user sites.
The Fusion PWAN is managed from an attractive PWAN portal to provide centralised control of each site, instant global port forward changes and multiple Internet gateway options. Changes are effective immediately giving the user superior control over their network.
While it can take weeks (or months) to get operational with a carrier’s solution, Fusion’s PWAN can be provisioned in less than 24 hours.
Mr Scaffold selects PWAN
Aluminium scaffold specialist, Mr Scaffold, installed Fusion Broadband’s bandwidth aggregation (broadband bonding) and its PWAN solution earlier this year to help it solve two problems at the same time.
Mark Gerrey, Mr Scaffold’s IT Manager, said the installation not only increased the bandwidth at all its interstate offices and remote sites, it provided the security of a private WAN.
“We were using a Sophos UTM (unified threat management) gateway with remote encryption devices but we continually had issues with breakdowns and dropouts in connectivity, slow throughput rates and other similar problems.
“Another issue that triggered our initial investigations was at a remote site on Garden Island in Sydney Harbour where we couldn’t get an ADSL connection. We had five people trying to use a single mobile device to connect to head office. It just didn’t work,” Gerrey said.
“So we decided to transfer to Fusion’s broadband aggregator and transition from Sophos as the encryption device to Fusion’s encryption PWAN device. We did have a quick look at other solutions, but the low cost of Fusion’s offering and its overall benefits far outweighed anything else we’d seen.
“One of the key benefits in using this technology is that we can continue to use any carrier depending on the best mobile connection in the area. We do use Telstra, Optus and Vodafone and have all our ADSL connections with Telstra. It works perfectly.
“Rolling out Fusion’s equipment and software across five sites in four states was quite simple. This is important as I’m the only IT asset for Mr Scaffold. Because we were trying to run the sites concurrently, there were a few headaches in the backward compatibility with the existing Sophos system to match in with what Fusion’s private LAN gave us. Once we completed the total migration to Fusion’s PWAN everything was fine.
“Productivity has increased dramatically in all our offices. Because we use a lot of calendar based information, staff were continually waiting for the computer to update from head office. That waiting time has been reduced. The increased bandwidth has also enabled us to delegate numerous tasks to the managers at remote offices rather than it having to be done at head office, which also means we aren’t double-handling things.
“Our primary Internet gateway is through the head office connection and because each remote site is now connected to the Internet, they are connected to our VPN and can start work knowing they are automatically linked to head office. They don’t have to worry about the IT side of things at all. They just hop on to the computer and do their job.
“A major ongoing benefit from the IT support point of view is that we are now able to concentrate on the other aspects of our IT environment knowing that our communications backbone is stable. For example, if a problem comes up in one of our interstate offices, rather than thinking that it could be a communications issue I can now look beyond that and assess whether it is software or hardware related. Before, it was always my first thought.
“The versatility of Fusion’s PWAN is also very impressive, which was highlighted when we created a new remote office with a direct link to head office. It took just one day for the Fusion equipment to be delivered and the next morning the remote office was up and running as though the employee was sitting in head office. That is a huge benefit.
“If we have any queries, Fusion’s tech people are only a phone call away and they do everything to help us, even if it’s not their issue. I can’t fault their service.”
About Fusion Broadband:
Fusion Broadband provides a unique broadband bonding solution that fuses multiple broadband connections together to make a much faster and more reliable connection. This gives businesses an easy, affordable, broadband bonding service that is ISP independent and delivers high speed data connections with more reliability and stability.
Fusion Broadband has been bonding broadband services for more than six years with products installed in Australia, North America, Asia and Europe. Organisations are now taking advantage of Fusion PWAN, which provides an affordable multi-site private network (SD-WAN) solution with exceptional flexibility, performance and control.
Fusion Broadband has around 90 resellers across Australia, selling and supporting the range of their products. As part of its reseller program and ISP license program, ISP’s or larger MSP’s can license the solution for their own deployment.
