Multi-site small medium business SMB WANs responding to the

Multi-site small/medium business (SMB) WANs: responding to the challenges and opportunities of last mile access

Outline • A bit of background on e. Pipe • The rise of broadband • Defining the needs of distributed business leveraging broadband access solutions • Reality hits: last mile challenges • A timely solution: Layer 3 bonding (ML-IP) • Illustration of ML-IP operation • ML-IP deployment enhancing broadband • Service provider, ISP and ASP deployments • Conclusion

The Broadband Revolution is Coming! • Broadband adoption for low cost, high bandwidth is booming • Internet usage continues to grow • Businesses becoming Internet-dependent • VPN accepted and deployed as a costeffective alternative to costly frame relay • Last mile access can either hinder or help depending on what is available! The revolution has begun… Hot applications: • File sharing • Image transfer • Financial services • Collaborative development • Extranets with suppliers • Advanced retail transactions and training

The Impact of Broadband • 56% of businesses view their BB service as indispensable • Business class options w/ SLAs growing daily • 300 million residential and commercial locations by 2007 • Growth rates predicted of 3070% per year depending on location and broadband type Broadband enables: • • • Cost-effective VPNs Productive telecommuting Business Internet use Distance learning Advanced retail apps Extranets with suppliers and customers • Much more…. Broadband enables incredible application connectivity at a very accessible price!

What does this mean for SMBs? • > 6 million SMBs in North America • > 65% SMBs are connecting multiple offices • VPN use by these SMBs will double in 2002 Easy to implement, affordable VPNs, Internet access and other applications + affordable broadband = revolutionary networking! SMBs are the backbone of the economy. Broadband brings effective, affordable data access to this critical market segment!

Are all needs being met though? What multi-site SMBs really want from their last-mile solution to be truly effective: • Bandwidth flexibility: buy only what they need from who they want, at the start and as they grow • Cost-effectiveness: price must be reasonable and commensurate with business enabled • High availability: can’t afford downtime and loss of $, and refuse to pay for unused redundant links • Ubiquity across locations: must be universally deployable Sound like reasonable requests, but the industry isn’t quite there yet….

Today’s reality… How does reality of today match up to the last mile needs of SMBs? • Bandwidth flexibility: buy only what they need from who they want, at the start and as they grow • Cost-effectiveness: price must be reasonable and commensurate with business enabled • High availability: can’t afford downtime and loss of $, and refuse to pay for unused redundant links • Ubiquity across locations: must be universally deployable Location can’t get broadband, so they are stuck with inflexible slow dial modem They want the power of frame at HQ, but can’t afford FR cost at branches They love broadband but it’s not reliable Unavailability of some solutions at locations means non-ubiquitous solution

Enter e. Pipe’s ML-IP Multilink IP (ML-IP) boosts the bandwidth and uptime of a VPN, WAN or Internet Access solution by utilizing transparent link aggregation with fail over that is independent of access technology or network provider, allowing customers to scale their bandwidth at any location, on demand. Inverse Multiplexing ML-PPP, MFR, IMA ML-IP 1 st generation 2 nd generation 3 rd generation ML-IP provides true aggregation bonding – not performance-limited load balancing or sharing!

How Does ML-IP Address Key Customer Requirements? ML-IP Solution BANDWIDTH ML-IP allows bonding of multiple DSL, cable, dial, ISDN, FR, ATM and/or LL to scale incrementally to fit exact bandwidth needs COST ML-IP’s flexibility allows customer to use the most cost -effective services to meet their needs HIGH AVAILABILITY Through powerful link resiliency management, ML-IP’s failover and dial-around capabilities insure the customer network stays up UBIQUITY ML-IP works at the IP layer and is transport and access link agnostic, so you can use the service / provider of choice at each site – even multiple providers

Site-Site ML-IP Link Aggregation ML-IP tunnels Dial Backup (up to 4 bonded modems) M M N x x. DSL, cable, leased lines (aggregated) PST N N x x. DSL, cable leased lines (aggregated) M Any IP Application M M FW/VPN Chicago Fragment, encapsulate and forward ML-IP Any IP Application FW/VPN POP IP Network A IP Network B A fully bonded solution from site to site: • high reliability • high bandwidth • no need for provider involvement POP Plus balanced Internet access! New York Receive, de-encapsulate and de-fragment

ISP Multilink IP Service ML-IP CPE Email server Web server FW/ VPN Customer 1 M M M Access Provider DSLAM 1 -3 x. DSL, Cable or leased lines (aggregated) Customer 2 Customer N Service Provider Internet SMS ML-IP Concentrator ML-IP tunnel A fully bonded solution from network edge to customer site: • Faster customer access to customer Web site • Faster Internet access and e-commerce • Faster VPNs with Checkpoint, Cisco etc

ML-IP CPE ASP Multilink IP Service FW/ VPN Customer 1 Customer 2 M M M Access Provider Internet DSLAM 1 -3 x. DSL or leased lines (aggregated) ML-IP Concentrator I B M S A P R High speed link (eg T-3) FW/ VPN Application Service Provider ML-IP tunnels Customer N A fully bonded solution from ASP to customer site: • More advanced, high bandwidth applications • Reliability to insure customer access to applications • Lower latency for better application performance

Unique Advantages of ML-IP Layer 3 Bonding for VPNs • Link type agnostic • Use the transport provider of your choice – even use multiple transport providers • No need to involve service provider to deploy • Compatible with any IP-based application • Fragmentation = low latency + added security • Support of asymmetrical (many to any) links match real-world implementations ML-IP bridges the gap!

Conclusion • Broadband access is a revolutionizing technology that could redefine how business is done • Today broadband solutions have significant last-mile issues in search of a good solution. • Businesses keep evolving faster than networks can manage, so solutions need to be customer-centric, not network-centric • Technologies like ML-IP are the future: enabling reliable bandwidth without tying customers to specific access or transport networks For more info on ML-IP visit us on the web at www. ml -ip. com