Ecessa Offers More Reliable VOIP

With its new ClariLink family of WAN link controllers, Ecessa gives small and midsized enterprises the load balancing and failover capabilities for network traffic previously unavailable to small and midsized enterprises. The ClariLink devices let IT administrators deploy SIP traffic across multiple WAN or service provider networks, offering redundancy and automatic failover in the event that a VOIP session is interrupted for any reason. If a VOIP session is ended because of a network problem, the call is automatically sent to another link, with little to no interruption.

Ecessa is rolling out a new family of WAN link controllers aimed at improving the performance and scalability of VOIP communications.

The ClariLink WAN link controller, announced May 12, balances SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) traffic across multiple WAN links and service provider networks, ensuring greater reliability, said John Addington, director of technical services at Ecessa.

"One of the limitations we found with SIP traffic ... was particularly in regard to failover," Addington said.

Currently, during a VOIP (voice over IP) session, if there is an interruption in the call, the person who is knocked off has to redial in order to get back into the call.

"It's not a seamless VOIP experience," Addington said.

ClariLink is designed to act as a front-end controller, managing disparate WAN links and capacity to offer redundancy in the link connections and automatic failover.

With ClariLink, if there is an interruption in the VOIP communications, the call is automatically moved to a second WAN link, with possibly an interruption of a second or so, Addington said.

The new WAN link controller is aimed at small and midsized enterprises. For these businesses, ClariLink gives them a more effective way to mange their voice networks, and greater confidence in integrating their voice systems with their data, multimedia and interactive initiatives.

With ClariLink, service providers, system integrators and VARs can offer voice and data network optimization that previously had not been available to SMEs, Ecessa officials said.

The product distributes network traffic among multiple network links-such as cable, xDSL, T1 and satellite links-and offers aggregation, automated inbound and outbound load balancing and failover capabilities.

The ClariLink family of WAN link controllers will be available in the third quarter.