Internet Policy Routing and Automatic Failover Solutions

Basic Failover solutions failover mission-critical business applications from one internet connection to another. Skyway West enhanced failover solutions use policy routing to make the most effective use of the two (or more) connections and justify that second internet connection for businesses even without mission-critical applications.

Policy Routing allows Skyway West customers to route different types of traffic over different Internet connections, giving important business applications their own dedicated circuit. For example, applications that require lower latency can utilize our business DSL or Fibre, while basic web browsing can be delivered over our High Speed Cable service, a fixed wireless solution or even a second Fibre connection. Another scenario might have customers sending and receiving all internal corporate traffic over ADSL or Fibre and all external traffic over cable internet.

After consultation with our customers, our policy routing equipment is engineered to identify and tag the different types of traffic based on unique characteristics like destination/originating IP Addresses, Type of Service (TOS) bits, Protocol and Port ranges and other identifiers. Traffic with identical tags is grouped together and sent over the preferred internet service.

For example, all traffic to and from an IP PBX can be delivered over lower latency DSL. This way, remote telephones and SIP trunks have their own dedicated Internet connection that isn’t sharing bandwidth with basic web browsing and Windows updates.

There are many ways larger enterprises can take advantage of Policy Routing. A number of our customers have 10 Mbps (Guaranteed) Full Duplex Fibre service at their Head Office, giving their remote users plenty of Upstream bandwidth. However the extra needs of most Head offices mean much higher Downstream speeds are required for web browsing.  Routing traffic over both a Symmetrical Fibre connection and a less expensive Cable or DSL service provides business with the speed and reliability to take advantage of “the cloud“.

For businesses with remote users, Skyway West will assign the same block of Public Static IP addresses to each Internet service. Shared IPs can be particularly important for remote users.  If one service becomes unavailable, the Terminal Server session or VPN will automatically be reconnected using the same IP address.

For more information about Policy Routing, Automatic Failover or any of our business Internet services, feel free to contact us anytime.

Chris Miles | 604-484-5257 | cmiles@skywaywest.com