11 Sep

Top 100 Furniture Retailer Chooses FatPipe SD-WAN to Ensure Business Continuity

SALT LAKE CITY, UT– One of America’s top 100 furniture retailers* has chosen FatPipe SD-WAN technology for multi-line network redundancy and fail-over. Processing orders and general office communications are supported by a site-to-site VPN infrastructure directly connected to its headquarters. “Computer automation is a key element to our overall business process,” said the Network Engineer. A stable VPN is essential to the furniture outlet’s ability to conduct business.

The company realized how mission critical its VPN was when communications to one of its warehouses was cut off for one entire business day due to a downed line. The line was physically cut, accidentally, on account of construction in the area. The data stream was stopped and productivity was significantly affected. They experienced delays in putting through orders because they had to revert to manual processes. Their inventory control was difficult to maintain and had to be reconciled from paper records once the data line was available again.

“Our entire business process for that location was affected when our VPN went down,” said the Network Engineer. Other applications, including email, accounting, inventory software, and warehouse management software all were run over the VPN. “We hit the point where downtime is unacceptable,” said the Network Engineer.

He and his team researched ways to mitigate the effects of WAN downtime. They first considered BGP. According to the Network Engineer, it was a hassle. “We started the ball rolling on implementing BGP and the more we got into it, the more difficult it was becoming, so we looked for an easier solution that was just as effective, but less expensive and time consuming. We chose FatPipe SD-WAN.”

Not only can FatPipe’s SD-WAN conduct line failover automatically, it is dynamic and works with the company’s diverse combination of data lines including DSL – something BGP simply cannot do. The company uses FatPipe to aggregate a mixed breed of DSL, T1, wireless, and Metro-Ethernet rings at the various sites. Data is automatically failed over to available lines if a connection, component, or service fails.

The company also enjoys the added benefit of FatPipe’s patented security overlay technology, MPSec, which provides an additional layer of security.

The Network Engineering teams are implementing other mission critical applications, including VoIP, over its VPN, where IP data route control and QoS will come into play. These features are integrated into FatPipe’s SD-WAN solution.

ABOUT FATPIPE

FatPipe® Networks founders Dr. Ragula Bhaskar and Sanchaita Datta invented the concept of software defined wide area networking and hybrid WANs that eliminate the need for hardware and software, or cooperation from ISPs and allows companies to control WAN traffic. FatPipe currently has 11 U.S. patents and over 180 technology claims related to multipath, software defined networking. FatPipe technology provides the world’s best intra-corporate wide area network solutions that transcend Internet and other network failures to maintain business continuity and high transmission security. FatPipe, with several thousand customers, has offices in the United States, and around the world, with over 700 resellers worldwide including almost all national resellers in the US.

*FatPipe does not release the names of its customers as a general policy of confidentiality.

 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Hayley Doehler

(801)281-3434 ext. 2221

E-mail hayley@fatpipeinc.com

08 May

FatPipe’s Patent for Session Based Outbound Load Balancing

At its simplest definition session based outbound load balancing is the ability to make an intelligent decision on which, of multiple, WAN connections on which to start a session.   In today’s networks where multiple WAN connections are becoming more and more prevalent this doesn’t seem like a revolutionary concept, however 1999 that was not the case.

In 1999 Windows NT was still battling Novell Netware for supremacy in corporate IT, there was still a discussion of whether TCP/IP or IPX/SPX would be the network protocol standard, and while most of the world was worrying whether or not computers would stop working on Y2K FatPipe filed for its second patent.

US Patent #6,493,341 was awarded December 10, 2002 and contains 23 technical claims.  A simple summary of this patent is a when controller receives a SYN packet destined for an external network, the controller makes a decision based on a least one load balancing criterion as to which WAN router to forward that SYN packet.

The patent is the foundation of all outbound session based load balancing.  FatPipe’s technical claims in this patent were recently validated in a Marksman hearing associated with an on-going patent infringement suit.