Patton electronic 2888 manual Solution Description, Unique Selling Position, Top FAQs, Page 2 of

Product Brief

Solution Description

As enterprise IT managers leverage the convergence of voice, video and data over Ethernet, the need to transport Ethernet over the WAN at speeds greater than a single T1/E1 increases. Avoid switching to an expensive T3/E3 circuit, transitioning to an unproven Ethernet based WAN service or spending endless hours configuring IP routing redundancy. Use the Model 2888 to bond multiple T1/E1 circuits and increase point-to-point Ethernet bandwidth without overcomplicating configurations or sacrificing resiliency.

Problem	Issue	Impact	Our Solution
		T1/E1 alternatives	Stick with well-known &
Need faster	A single T1/E1 is not	introduce cost, risk,	reliableT1/E1 circuits and
point-to-point		complexity and are	bond them together for
	fast enough any more
connections		not available	maximum bandwidth
		everywhere
Complex Router	Configuring IP load	Increases risk router	Simplify by bridging
			Ethernet traffic over the
Configurations	balancing is complex	is misconfigured
			WAN
Prioritizing some	Real-time applications	Without active QoS	Apply active layer 2/3 QoS
	need dedicated	voice and video	and guarantee applications
applications over
	bandwidth and higher	applications will be	the bandwidth they need
others
	priority	unusable

Unique Selling Position

The IpLink™ Model 2888 Multi-Megabit Inverse Mux increases point-to-point Ethernet/IP bandwidth over standard T1/E1 circuits, reducing configuration complexity, and providing active QoS for real-time application requirements.

Top FAQs

Q. If all my traffic is IP why should I use Ethernet bridging?

A. The other alternative, configuring a router for load-balancing can be a difficult task. First of all, a router can load balance outbound traffic only. To get bidirectional load balancing requires complex configuration at both ends. Secondly, both routers must be configured to assign the same administrative distance and cost to a destination. Lastly, load balancing at the IP packet layer creates a situation where packets can reach the destination out of order, creating a problem for streaming media such as video. By using Ethernet bridging and relying on ML-PPP, the configuration is simplified and the out of order packet problem eliminated.

Q. What happens if one of my T1/E1 fails, does my entire link go down?

A. No, with ML-PPP, if a T1/E1 goes down, the Ethernet traffic will continue to flow across the active links. When the failed link comes back up, full bandwidth is automatically restored without manual intervention.

Q. Does the Inverse Mux use ATM to multiplex the T1/E1 circuits?

A. No. The Inverse Mux uses Multi-Link PPP (ML-PPP) which is 18% more efficient than ATM when using 256 byte packets. Efficiency increases further with packet sizes of over 1,000 bytes which are typically used by streaming video.

Q. Does the IpLink™ Inverse Mux support VLANs?

A. Yes. The Inverse Mux can be configured to apply QoS based on VLAN tags as well as tag untagged VLAN traffic. It can likewise transparently pass VLAN, Cisco ISL and MAC-in-MAC (PBB) frames as well as MPLS tagged traffic.

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