Automated ISP Failover / Failback
Our link load balancing capabilities allows for Internet sessions to be balanced across multiple WAN links which enables faster connectivity for end-users and increases the overall bandwidth available to the network. Link balancing has advantages in that it does not utilize as many system resources and allows for dynamic route manipulation in order to optimize WAN utilization.
Enterprise Class Link Redundancy
The Edge Wan & Internet Load Balancer delivers a solid yet flexible solution for organizations looking for a reliable network load balancing product. Our applied patent technology was developed to ensure multilink stability and reliability while running on our high performance platforms.
Instant Server Connection Resiliency
The EdgeXOS appliance incorporates our own ActiveDNS technology which is essentailly a built-in dynamic DNS server (no external service is required). The ActiveDNS module works in a way which ensures instant failover from one inbound server link to another (i.e. not wait for a TTL to expire). This capability is typically not found in most competing products, and is certainly not available in most "firewall" multi-wan solutions.
Link Selection Policies
The EdgeXOS appliance includes the ability to create ordered policies for routing inbound and outbound traffic based on the status of each WAN link. This way network administrators can determine how traffic is routed, and under what circumstances, in the event an outage occurs on any of the ISP links. This "ordered" application of rules provides administrators with a great degree of flexibility when configuring failover policies.
Session Persistence
The EdgeXOS appliance has built-in enhanced session policy-routing which ensures that applications which are sensitive to link hopping maintain their state throughout the session. Network administrators can also create policies for specific destination networks to allow either more relaxed or stricter session enforcement based on the organizations unique requirements.
Without The EdgeXOS
There are a number of other products on the market, typically "firewall" products which say they also offer link balancing and redundancy. The reality that most of these products lack a number of critical features that are required to deliver a true solution, including:
Built-In DNS Intelligence
Most "firewall" solutions do not incorporate internal DNS and rely on external "dynamic DNS" providers. The problem with this approach is that not only is it more expensive, as the end-user must then purchases a service contract with the external DNS provider, but that with this method there is no way to instantly update the DNS queries on the fly. While these other solutions can send an update to the external DNS provider, there is no guarantee that the update will take immediately and even once it does, external clients must wait for the TTL to expire.
Session Persistence Capabilities
Most "firewall" solutions which include link balancing capabilities do not perform well when used with applications which require session persistence. Much of the time users will find that applications only work some of the time while other applications stop working in the middle of a file upload, etc. The EdgeXOS appliance is an enterprise class solution which does not suffer from these issues.
True Link Bonding
Unlike most other "firewall" solutions which include some form of limited link failover and/or balancing, none of those solutions offer the ability to bond WAN links for improved web-based downloads by utilizing ALL of the active ISP connections at the same time. This is one of the more unique capabilities of the EdgeXOS appliance and one that provides a significant advantage over other solutions in the market today.