Aggregate your Frankenstein Network

Mike Kelsen

So, you’ve made the decision to incorporate broadband into your corporate WAN, deploying Internet as a Transport (IAAT) at branch office locations distributed across the country.

Great. Now what?

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as dialing the Internet Service Provider (ISP) you use at headquarters (HQ). The problem is that, generally, there is no single ISP covering all of your locations nationwide. Instead, in the US, we have a patchwork of telecomm providers and Multiple System Operators (MSOs) broken-down by region and transport type.

Want cable in Minneapolis? Well, that’s Comcast. DSL in Dallas? Call AT&T.

Now, let’s say you make the heroic, up-front effort and are able to engage (and negotiate separate contracts with) these multiple, disparate vendors necessary to achieve connectivity at all your locations across the country. The next problem is on going, operational support post-install.

Wireless 3G circuits misbehaving in Philadelphia? Call Verizon. DS3 down in Los Angeles? Call Qwest.

To complicate matters further, each of your Internet vendors will have different service level agreements (SLAs), support protocols, response times, and Web-based user-interfaces for break-fix and service credit policies. As a result, you will have no standard IAAT delivery model across your branches. On the contrary, your internal clients will have as many different user experiences, support environments and escalation protocols as you have ISPs.

Management of this "Frankenstein network" will be a constant, thankless, up-hill battle. In a word: nightmare.

Enter the Internet Aggregator

Interposing a network bundler as a middle layer between you and the multiple ISPs can fix all these issues. This ISP of ISPs sits between you and the network operators, creating virtually what does not really exist actually. Now you can make that single call, deal with a single point of contact, rely upon a single SLA and escalate with one contact when there is a problem. In short, if you intend to use IAAT in your corporate wide area network (WAN), the aggregator may be the key to your success.