Veteran network controller vendor Ecessa, formerly Astrocom, has launched its latest product line, the ClariLink family of WAN link controllers for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) traffic.
Ecessa has two major lines of products, PowerLink and ShieldLink. PowerLink provides load balancing and multiple WAN (Wide Area Network) aggregation failover and high availability, while ShieldLink adds VPN
ClariLink adds SIP proxy-aware application integration to the ShieldLink line. SIP has many uses, but one of its most prominent is in the Voice over IP (VoIP) market as part of quality of service (QoS) support.
Right now, VoIP has reliability issues. If there is an interruption in the connection, the parties are disconnected. ClariLink is a front-end controller that manages the WAN connections, handling load balancing and preserving the connection as well as the quality of the call.
“VoIP is not limited by this, but a large chunk of customers will be VoIP users who want the reliability and high availability and load balancing and failover, the quality we can provide being integrated with an appliance that does all those things,” Brad Johnson, lead developer for Ecessa, told InternetNews.com.
With ClariLink, if there is an interruption in the VoIP communications or the load becomes burdensome, the call is automatically moved to another WAN link. The result is better quality calls and fewer dropped calls.
“We have beta sites looking to go to VoIP,” said Johnson. “They currently have a single PRI (Primary Rate Interface) line to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), so if that line goes down they lose their phones. They are very interested in the cost savings by going to VoIP and using a product such as ours.”
The new WAN link controller is aimed at small and midsized customers looking for more effective voice network management and to manage and shape their bandwidth traffic, but Johnson said VoIP isn’t the only usage scenario for ClariLink. For example, it can also handle data, multimedia and interactive initiatives.
The ClariLink line will be available in the third quarter. The company said pricing hasn’t finalized.
