Network Load Balancing & Distribution – Network Aggregation Bandwidth
SD-WAN Features
Intelligent load balancing
The Internet is a dynamic, changing set of interconnected networks with variable performance. We built Bigleaf to adapt dynamically as your Internet connections change. To accomplish that, we’ve built advanced monitoring and real-time adaptation into the core of the Bigleaf system.
End-to-end advanced monitoring
Each Internet circuit that you plug in to your Bigleaf on-site router is measured 10 times per second in both directions. This provides sub-second monitoring of multiple circuit metrics, including:
- Latency
- Jitter
- Packet Loss
- Capacity
Traditional load-balancers or multi-WAN firewalls use one or a few fixed IP addresses or host names to monitor the status of each Internet connection. These methods monitor a tiny subset of Internet paths to determine the entire status of each internet connection. To provide end-to-end visibility, our monitoring system measures each internet connection from your location, all the way through the majority of the internet path, to our gateway clusters.
This provides a complete picture of the performance of each circuit. The remaining portion of the Internet path, from our gateway clusters to the endpoint your traffic is talking to (e.g. Google, your VoIP provider, your remote site), is reliable since we’re directly wired in to major Internet backbone peering exchanges.
Since the Bigleaf system has end-to-end monitoring, it adapts to issues wherever they are in the last-mile and middle-mile of the Internet – where issues most often occur. This helps insulate your Internet experience from routine ISP problems like peering disputes, unplanned maintenance, BitTorrent traffic, and ISP human error.
We use that performance data to load-balance your traffic in real-time according to circuit conditions and application needs.
Bandwidth aggregation and optimization
Redundancy feels wasteful when you can’t make use of all the bandwidth you’re buying. We solve that through a unique adaptive load balancing system. This aggregation of bandwidth makes the most efficient use possible of all your Internet circuits.
Every “multi-wan router” or “Internet load-balancer” says they optimize your Internet, perform intelligent routing, and give you the best experience possible. So how is Bigleaf different? Beyond the practical difference that our solution is a service rather than a box you buy, we act on 2 fundamental differences. We believe that:
- Each of your Internet circuits likely has different, unique performance characteristics.
- Each application you’re using has specific network performance needs.
Our system identifies your application traffic flows in real time. As you use the Internet, we detect what kinds of applications you’re using and automatically determine what the performance needs of those applications are. We then use patent-pending algorithms to integrate that application traffic flow data with the real-time circuit monitoring data that our system gathers. This combined dataset is used to ensure optimal load-balancing and QoS for all your applications at any given point in time.
This means:
- Traffic fails over between circuits within 4 seconds in response to the outage of a circuit, so VoIP calls, downloads, uploads, or any other sessions move between circuits seamlessly.
- ISP issues like heavy oversubscription, saturated router interfaces, peering issues, and other causes of variable performance are detected and traffic is re-routed immediately, mid-stream.
- You get the fastest speed possible for your big file transfers, while your real-time traffic like VoIP takes the most reliable path available
The perfect match
Bigleaf Intelligent Load Balancing uses Software Defined Networking (SDN) to continually match your application traffic needs with the current Internet connection capabilities
Flexible Load Balancing Algorithms
Depending on the traffic type, circuit conditions, circuit capacities, and other factors, our system will either:
- Load-balance over all circuits
- Load-balance over a subset of circuits
- Send traffic down one circuit
All of these options are available to each type of traffic at any point in time, and decisions are made independently for each direction of traffic (upload/download) to provide you with the best possible performance.
Bigleaf measures circuit metrics 10x per second in both directions to determine how traffic should be routed for optimal performance.
Then dynamically routes traffic to optimize for circuit conditions and traffic makeup.
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