Global Geolink

Elfiq Networks’ Global Geolink feature brings enterprise-class multisite geographic traffic balancing for business continuity and disaster recovery optimization. With Global Geolink, organizations can design and implement infrastructures which will be resilient and will be able to process data even if sites go dark as long as one is operating. Up to 6 physically separate sites can be made geographically resilient with this technology.

Should a site’s links become unavailable, key corporate services can be geographically balanced to another site to prevent any downtime and this adjustment can be done in seconds unlike BGP which can take up to an hour do the same.

To meet this need, Elfiq Networks’ research team developed the NATTP protocol. NATTP stands for "Network address translation transfer protocol" which runs its own protocol number on IP networks. It was created as a very efficient way to encapsulate valid traffic and modify its original path. NATTP is preferable to NAT because it removes any security risks associated with passing public traffic on private links by encapsulating the traffic so that only another Link LB unit can retrieve the data.

A secure Geolink tunnel is created between each site named Geolink which is created on a unit’s second virtual forwarding interface (VFI) which will be used for the following:

• Exchange of metrics between sites so each balancer is aware of the next one’s status, including link saturation, link availability, iDNS metrics, ISV metrics and algorithm configuration
• Transferring traffic between physically separate sites

The Geolink must be established on private WAN links such as MPLS or over IPSec VPN tunnels.