VoIP Advantage - News & Blog

The Academy of Communication, huge savings with VoIP

2009-06-24T10:37:00.004+01:00

I'm pleased to welcome Valentine Palmer of the Academy of Communication as a new client for our VoIP services and to tell you a bit about him:

VALENTINE PALMER has spent some 35 years in the world of media and entertainment. His early career embraced leading roles in London’s West End, including Bill Sykes in “Oliver”, as well as many appearances in classic British TV shows like “Dr Who”, “Emmerdale” and “Minder”. Valentine later became a producer of radio and TV commercials, as well as making many corporate and training videos for clients like BP Oil, and IBM. For the past 10 years Valentine has utilised his media skills in training people from all areas of business in the basics of personal communication skills.

Valentine’s unique approach to voice, image, body language and the designing of successful pitches and presentations has been much in demand by companies like Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Cisco Systems, Deutsche Bank. Abbott Laboratories and Hanson plc. His Speak the Best Business English courses have helped people from China, India, The Middle East, Russia, Poland, Africa, Scandinavia, Germany and Spain. Valentine has appeared as a coach on BBC TV and Channel 5 and you can see him in action on Channel 5 TV by going to the Home Page of his web site: www.AcademyOfCommunication.com

A recent convert to VoIP telephones, through VoIP Advantage, Valentine is thrilled with the huge savings over normal BT rates. As an example, he recently made a 5 minute call to his son, who is filming in Cairo. Valentine called him on his Egyptian mobile from one of the UK VoIP phones. The cost? 9p!

Divert Calls Outside VoIP - a benefit of hosted VoIP

2009-06-10T14:28:00.004+01:00

One of the benefits of hosted VoIP is the ability to add telephone numbers that aren't VoIP telephone numbers to the VoIP system.

For example, one of my clients just rang me from his mobile, saying that all his staff were out of the office at key meetings and that there was no one to answer the phones. Could I divert their incoming calls to a relative's landline for a few hours?

As it is hosted VoIP the control panel for managing the phone system is available through our website, therefore I was able to login and make the necessary changes myself. No need for me to visit the client's office.

What did I change? Well, I set up an Alias for the relative's phone number. An Alias is a pointer from our system to an external number such as someone's mobile or landline number. This Alias was then added to the internal hunt group (so that out-of-hours messages and personalised voice messages still worked). Now, when an incoming call is received, the office phones will ring and the relative's phone will ring and the call is going to be answered.

Additionally, now that the Alias has been created it can stay in the system and just be turned on or off easily in the future by myself or the client through their control panel.

Pleased to welcome new client JFDI Phoenix Ltd

2009-05-22T10:49:00.003+01:00

I am very pleased to welcome as a new VoIP client JFDI Phoenix Ltd, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. The guys at JFDI have done excellent work for me in the past and it's nice to be able to return the favour!

Being a bunch of techies, they haven't just set up a basic VoIP system, they've also had me testing the latest X-Lite 4.0 Beta running on Vista and using the SIP functionality of Fring on their windows mobiles. Both of which ran perfectly first time with VoIP Advantage :-)

Unified Communications, what is it and where is it going?

2009-03-13T16:42:00.007Z

I listened to a good talk yesterday at the Unified Communications show at Olympia. This talk was by Chris Wortt (EMEA Manager for VoIP at Polycom) and was about helping decision makers understand VoIP technologies and standards in order to develop a suitable communication strategy for their business.

Chris was a good speaker and managed to put across his beliefs as to what unified communications (UC) means and will come to mean very well. Particularly, he thinks that UC should encompass the ability to communicate and share information between people regardless of the distance between them or the device being used or the media type chosen.

The benefit to business of UC is rapid access to information and people which leads to improved efficiency and better customer service. One of the examples he used was to consolidate many instant messaging (IM) clients to one communicator; i.e. being able to start conversations with users of Windows Live Messenger or Skype or Yahoo all from the same client software. Certainly amongst my contacts each prefers to use different IM services and it becomes a pain to have them all open all of the time, so I could see his point.

To further the possibilities of consolidation Chris is an advocate of open standards (he may have other reasons too) such as SIP, HTTP, XML and open APIs. He did note that Microsoft's Office Communication Server (OCS), which is a proprietary system, is stirring things up in this arena too. I agree with both of these points, though I would like to point out that Gradwell (our VoIP platform provider) were successfully demonstrating integration between OCS and their SIP based VoIP platform at yesterday's show too.

Next, Chris sees adoption of UC as likely to be driven by UC phones. These should include video, voice, IM and CRM integration as well as being easy to use. (In fact there was a good example of a phone like this at the BNS Distribution Ltd stand with a new Grandstream video phone, due out in the next quarter or two, I liked it.)

What other things will affect adoption? Well Chris also believes that those of us who are getting used to high definition in the rest of our lives (HD TVs, BluRay DVD etc) will demand this same quality in our communications. He also believes this will be very beneficial to the users too, as, for example, wideband (Hi-Def) audio codecs (such as G.722 and G.719 Stereo) transmit far more of the conversation. Particularly for conversations with people with different accents this makes understanding each other much easier and makes conversations then run more naturally (source: Polycom's own experiences) and be less exhausting.

Increased use of high definition video and sound is also going to affect our network and bandwidth requirements. HD video will require between 1-2Mb/s of bandwidth per conversation. So Gigabit networks are going to be very necessary and anyone planning to use these services over wifi should be implementing 802.11n (preferably with 2 or more endpoints at a site) for their wifi networks.

Finally, Chris banged on about how we should get consumer level services (such as the superb user interface of the iPhone) in services aimed at businesses. To be honest this has been a frustration of mine too. Let's hope business technology products get more and more user driven!

There was more to his talk than that, but those were my favourite bits and the ones I felt were most important. Excellent.

Gradwell stability improvements

2009-02-12T09:26:00.003Z

Our VoIP platform supplier Gradwell experienced some server failures in January which led to a few weeks of very poor quality voice service. They believe this is now probably fixed and have just released an excellent explanation of what went wrong, what they have done to fix the issues and what they have done and are doing to improve system resilience even more for the future. This is available on the Gradwell blog:
http://blog.gradwell.net/2009/02/12/gradwell-january-stability-improvements/

SIP softphones for Macs

2009-02-10T12:21:00.005Z

We recently tested a number of different softphone clients running on Macs. The phones we tested included SJPhone, Zoiper, X-Lite & Express Talk. Based on ease of setup, call quality and the useability/look and feel of the phones in everyday use there was a clear winner:

Express Talk from NCH Software.

Recommended Speed Tests

2009-01-20T09:33:00.005Z

I'm often asked what we recommend to use to check the speed of an internet connection. The answer is we recommend TestYourVoIP.com and SpeedTest.net.

When running a test at testyourvoip.com, use the destination of London from a PC plugged into the same network. My result on TestYourVoip (from a Be Broadband connection) looks like this:

When running a test at SpeedTest.net I recommend running 4 or 5 tests to different servers around the country, and working out the average. The result of the check I just ran (over a Be Broadband connection) looks like this:

Both of the above results bode well for the speed of my broadband connection (both upload and download) and mean I should be experiencing high quality VoIP calls.

Monday's Network Issues - 19/01/09

2009-01-20T08:37:00.003Z

I apologise to our customers affected by the network issues yesterday. I've detailed below the events of the afternoon as reported by our platform provider Gradwell and we are told that these same issues should not happen again.

Network issue

We are currently aware of an issue which is affecting our virtualised network in London. Our server team are investigating and we will update customers as soon as possible with further information.

Update 14:30 Our server team are currently restarting some of the key servers within our Telehouse cluster and we are working closely with our platform vendors to identify the cause of the network issue we are currently seeing. We hope to provide a resolution to this problem as soon as possible.

Update 15:00 We are currently recovering all affected services and expect all services to be fully online shortly.

Update 15:40 Whilst the majority of services are now back in operation, including our VoIP NAT proxies. Our virtual PBX lon-pbx-14 is not yet back in operation. We apologise for the ongoing inconvenience to customers using these services.

Update 18:10 Our VoIP Centrex server lon-pbx-14 has now been brought back online and is handling calls correctly. We apologise for the length of time this server was unavailable.

Update 19:30 All known issues with our servers have now been resolved. If you are experiencing any remaining problems, please contact our customer services team, who will be able to advise you and inform our server team of any problems which may remain. Apologies for the extended problems today. Our server team are working through a lot of changes which should make our network more resilient in future.

Successful seminar on VoIP

2009-01-19T14:58:00.007Z

Last week I was asked to explain what VoIP is, and how it may be relevant to small businesses at a seminar run by Yoolaa. I think I managed this without putting too many members of the audience to sleep! In fact, one attendee, Richard Excell of Excell Design commented:

"Peter is an excellent trainer and speaker on the specialist subject of VoIP, and indeed an expert on advising companies and individuals on its use and implementation - if you want to know more about this subject you should be beating your way to his door!"

Here are the slides:

New VoIP Client - Kixis Design

2008-12-22T15:37:00.002Z

We're pleased to welcome Kixis Design as a new VoIP Advantage customer. Kixis Design have selected our Centrex package to manage their calls. They Ported their existing number from BT and this enabled them to get rid of a BT line, saving them even more money every month. Kixis Design specialise in graphic design for business including corporate identities, marketing and sales literature, advertising campaigns, web sites, PR and exhibition materials. For more information please visit http://www.kixis.co.uk/

Best Business VoIP Provider Award!

2008-12-19T16:56:00.000Z

We provide our VoIP service in partnership with Gradwell Ltd and we're extremely pleased to announce that Gradwell have been awarded "Best Business VoIP 2008" at the ITSPA Awards. They beat rivals such as BT, Enta, Hipcom, Inclarity, Voipfone and Viatel.

Eli Katz, Chairman of ITSPA, said:
“A distinguished panel of judges representing the thought leaders in the industry completed an extensive analysis of the UKs top VoIP products and services. Entries were judged on reliability, user-friendliness, design, innovation, price and value for money. The purpose of the ITSPA awards 2008 is to help foster excellence, and to recognise and reward achievement."

Indeed, these are the reasons why we work with Gradwell, and it is nice to see them being recognised for their hard work.

New VoIP Client - Driveway Creative

2008-12-18T16:34:00.002Z

We're pleased to welcome Driveway Creative as a new VoIP Advantage customer. Driveway Creative have selected our Centrex package to manage their calls, particularly as it enabled them to set up a phone number without needing a new BT line to be fitted. For more information about Driveway Creative and their natural stone resin based surfaces please visit http://www.drivewaycreative.co.uk/

C LEVEL Case Study / Interview

2008-11-26T16:35:00.007Z

I've just interviewed our client Daren Howarth of C LEVEL about his use of VoIP Advantage. Daren has been using our service since March 2007. It was good to hear what he thinks of the service.

At the moment he uses our service to route calls from his London and 0870 numbers to his mobile. As he's currently spending 90% of his time in France this is more important than it may sound. He'd already taken a couple of calls today. Indeed soon after he'd started with us (in Spring 2007) he took a call that has turned into his biggest client ever. Daren is very pleased that call didn't simply go to an answerphone, and he's very happy with our service. Take a look at the brief interview here: C LEVEL interview.

Very interestingly, he's spent the last 8 months building an ecohome that is going to be appearing in the next series of Grand Designs (in February 2009, should be episode 4 'The Ground House'). Please take a look at the website for the house here: http://www.groundhouse.co.uk/, and find out more about C LEVEL here: http://www.clevel.co.uk/

Hosted VoIP for start-ups & small businesses?

2008-10-31T12:53:00.003Z

A friend asked me yesterday what benefits hosted VoIP has for start-ups and small businesses. So I've had a go at outlining the more obvious reasons below:

You can get a phone number without having to get a new BT line installed for it;
It can grow with you, as it is scaleable to as many users and phone numbers as you want. You can easily add new services or remove unwanted services each month to match your current needs;
Your number is not tied to one address, so you can move your business from home office, to serviced offices to leased offices all without changing your contact details & with no downtime;
You can answer your company phone as if you're in the office, whether you're at home, on your mobile, in the office or even abroad;
It should include all these features: hunt groups; voicemail; welcome messages; voice menus; hold music; conference calls; call transfers; call redirects; & out of hours messages;
Calls between your VoIP enabled office and home workers are free;
Cheap to set up and low monthly cost;
No expensive PBX box is needed in your office or home, or expensive maintenance & support contract for said box;
Great local support from us.

ExElement Case Study / Interview

2008-10-13T17:46:00.003+01:00

I've just interviewed our client Tim Brickle of Extreme Element about his use of VoIP Advantage. Tim has been using our service for over 6 months and I thought it would be good to get some real world feedback.

I'm pleased to say the feedback was very positive, he is particularly pleased with the call quality and with our competitive hardware prices. Plus, he's already been recommending us to his friends!

There is lots more juicy detail about their VoIP experiences (and the full transcript of the interview) available here: ExElement Interview

I'd also like to plug ExElement for their extreme sports courses, training and experiences. Please do visit Extreme Element's website at http://www.exelement.co.uk

Can hosted VoIP save me money?

2008-10-07T16:58:00.006+01:00

In these times of Credit Crunch and recession, one of the areas that businesses may be able to save money is by moving their telephone services to a hosted VoIP provider (such as ourselves).

For those who don't know the terminology, hosted VoIP is the routing of voice conversations over the internet through any IP-based network. Unlike a traditional phone system which requires a PBX service in your office, hosted VoIP is a managed telephone solution delivering your calls straight to your desktop phones or computers.

In no particular order, I've listed below the key reasons that our customers say they've saved money by using VoIP:

VoIP Advantage updates the software and systems every few months (if you had your own PBX in house how often would you spend money on upgrading it?)
it gives you the ability to grow and contract your business without large capital cost
it increased our employee productivity and mobility
the voice service is bought monthly, so if you need to add or remove users you can do it, without any penalty
if you make office moves, there are no relocation costs you simply move the telephone handsets to the new office, plug them into the network and they work
integrating home workers into your organisation is just as simple. If your employees have a home broadband connection, deploying a handset to their home seamlessly connects them into your office telephone service
for calls to normal fixed line telephones or mobiles the call rates can give savings of up to 42% on standard tariffs
additionally any calls between your VoIP enabled office or home workers are free
paying BT for ISDN or analogue lines isn't cheap, by receiving your calls over broadband internet connections you can reduce a significant part of monthly overhead cost
don't miss a sale, you can forward your office extension to a home office phone, your mobile, and any fixed line number or even set a number of phones to ring (home, office, mobile and assistant)
with the VoIP Advantage online control panel you can administer changes yourself, adding new extensions, amending voice menus and hunt groups and more
you can even avoid having to buy expensive handsets by downloading free 'softphones' and just plugging your headset into your computer to use VoIP

If you now think hosted VoIP can help save you money give us a call on 01273 358000 or visit www.voipadvantage.co.uk to find out how to sign up and start saving!

VoIP Adapter Updated

2008-10-06T15:34:00.005+01:00

We have just updated the VoIP Adapter (combine your analogue phone with a VoIP service) we supply from the Flexor 151 to the Grandstream HT-502 VoIP Adapter. This product is one of the choices included within our All Inclusive Calls Packages.

The Grandstream HT-502 VoIP Adapter has the following features:

Combine your analogue phone for use with VoIP
Universal Plug-in-Play
2 FXS ports (RJ11) with up to 2 SIP account profiles
Dual10/100 Mpbs ports (RJ45) with integrated router
Advanced features: Caller ID, call waiting, 3-way conference, blind or attended transfer
Call forward, do not disturb, voicemail, MLS voice prompts
T.38 fax compatible, direct IP calling
Supports Voice Codecs: G.711(a/u-law), G.723.1, G.729A/B, G.729E
G.726-40/32/24/16 and iLBC
Web management for easy configuration and installation

Calls to 3 Mobile rate change

2008-08-08T11:30:00.001+01:00

3 Mobile UK rate change

There has been a significant rate change for calls to Three mobile and, therefore, our retail rates for these calls has changed.

Calls to Three Mobile phones will now cost:
* Peak: 10 pence per min (ppm)
* Off Peak Weekdays: 9ppm
* Weekends: 16ppm

We can Port telephone numbers from Virgin Media

2008-07-24T15:54:00.002+01:00

We can now Port Virgin Media (Telewest/NTL) as well as BT, Energis, VoIP numbers and Directory Enquiries!

It is now possible to port all BT and Virgin Media geographic area code telephone numbers. Non-geographic numbers beginning with 08 (e.g 0800, 0870, 0845) supplied by BT or Energis can also be ported. We regret that we cannot port Virgin Media non-geographic numbers beginning with 08.

We are also able to port numbers from some existing VoIP providers such as Sipgate (providing you have their agreement to do so). This takes up to 3 days to complete once permission is granted.

NB: Any numbers with services attached/associated to them (e.g. fax, broadband, alarm systems, credit card machines) will be ceased when the number is ported over to VoIP Advantage. If this is the case you must arrange to transfer these services to new number with BT or Virgin Media before attempting to port.

New Service - Remote Call Forwarding

2008-07-22T16:29:00.004+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that we have a new service available to our customers: Remote Call Forwarding.

This is a simple and cost effective way of routing any number to any existing PSTN number. This is normally used if you want to add a new telephone number, probably a 'professional' number (e.g. an 0800 or 0845 number or a 'memorable' number in your home area code) for a new business or new reason within an existing business (dedicated sales line for instance).

There is no set up fee.
£3.00 per month rental.
UK Calls forwarded at just 1.25 pence per minute.
UK Mobile Calls forwarded from just 10 pence per minute at peak rate.

New VoIP Client - Hatt Adventures

2008-06-10T12:33:00.002+01:00

We're pleased to welcome Hatt Adventures as a new VoIP Advantage customer. Hatt Adventures have selected our Centrex package to manage their calls and particularly to pass calls to the right member of staff, wherever they may be having an adventure. For more information about Hatt Adventures and something a little different to the norm please visit http://www.thehatt.co.uk/adventures/

New VoIP Client - Kids-Biz Limited

2008-05-23T11:21:00.003+01:00

We're pleased to welcome Kids-Biz Limited as a new VoIP Advantage customer. Kids-Biz have selected our Centrex package combined with a Fax to Email package as their preferred VoIP solution. For more information about Kids-Biz and their cool clothes for kids please visit http://www.kids-biz.co.uk/

wireless08 - The Invisible Threat

2008-05-22T16:13:00.000+01:00

A pretty good talk on interference affecting Wireless LANs by Mohamed Zouire of AirMagnet Inc.

Roughly divided into two types:

1) Interference caused by Wireless (802.11) devices. Main causes being: too many devices on the same channel; and adjacent channels being used (leave a 3 channel gap if possible).

2) Interference caused by other stuff on the same frequencies (2.4GHz & 5GHz): microwaves; bluetooth devices; video cameras; DECT phones; wireless mikes; and jammers.

Having tracked the cause of the interference (possibly by using AirMagnet's Spectrum Analyser) the general order to fix it might be: move it; shield it; try to work around it.

Good summary I thought.

wireless08 - Taking VoIP on the Road

2008-05-22T14:02:00.001+01:00

I heard a good talk from Marcus Birkl (Siemens) this morning. Some great statistics:

* 41% of employees operate away from their desks (Yankee Group);
* 33% of mobile calls originate within the enterprise's premises (Frost & Sullivan).

He talked about convenience causing more mobile than deskphone calls. This made me think that convenience leads naturally to wireless connectivity & unified communications on one device. In turn this means more convergence of services onto all singing & dancing hardware devices.

For voice, this probably means being reachable on a single corporate number, and using VoIP on the mobile phone (with gives a bonus of reducing roaming charges when abroad).

I'll keep looking for a decent VoIP client for my mobile then!

Load Balancing Routers

2008-04-15T18:52:00.005+01:00

One of the potential drawbacks of VoIP is that your calls come in over your internet (generally broadband or cable) connection and that has a limited capacity. A busy office might only be able to handle 3 or 4 phone calls at once over their standard broadband connection. So, what happens when you want to have more people making calls?

One option is to set new people up in new locations, and this way the VoIP service is pretty much infinitely expandable. i.e. if every employee works from home over their home broadband connection then there is no sharing of the connection with the other employees.

In many companies this is not an option (or maybe not the whole answer). Many companies thrive on having teams working in the same offices, learning and being motivated by working together. So, what is your next option?

First up is checking the speed and quality of your existing connection. ISPs like Be Broadband can offer up to 24Mb download speeds (and as importantly for VoIP pretty high upload speeds too) where they have their unbundled equipment in your local exchange. Even in normal BT Exchanges you can choose an ISP like Zen Internet to get you better quality connections. These improvements could well take you up to perhaps even 20 calls being made over the connection (that is not a promise!).

Some people can then even add an extra broadband line and dedicate that to just VoIP calls while the old line continues to be used for just internet surfing. This does require a bit more knowledge about how to manage your network. The more broadband lines then the more complicated this can get. A drawback to this is that generally the upload speeds available are not nearly as high as the download speed you get, I've often seen it at around a 5th of the received download speed (i.e. 8Mb ADSL download, may be getting just over 1Mb upload speed) and a VoIP call uses equal amounts of upload and download bandwidth).

The next answer could well be an SDSL connection. This is a Synchronous connection giving you equal upload and download speeds (and those people I know with SDSL connections love them) but this can still be a pretty major step up in monthly costs (a 2Mbps SDSL from Zen Internet currently costs £299/month).

I believe that for small businesses the answer at this point lies with Load Balancing Routers. You can take additional normal broadband connections (could be ADSL, Cable, even Leased Line) and aggregate them in one router. This then lets you share the aggregated upload and download speeds easily over your network. Generally these load balanced routers can accept 2 to 4 (WAN) connections. The beauty about this is you get the full benefit of all the upload bandwidth from all of the connections.

A second benefit is that if one ISP experiences some downtime, you won't be shutdown, you'll only be slowed down as the Router automatically keeps you connected on the other connections. Work continues, even if not as effectively or fast as normal until the broken connection is repaired. I believe this gives a small business the best levels of availability, scalability, and performance.

What I don't know yet is which Load Balancing Routers are the best, most cost effective, easiest to setup. Based on my research I've listed below Load Balancing Routers from the key suppliers (along with a very quick bit of research as to an online price for each) and would be very interested in anyones experiences and comments on any of these:

1) Draytek Vigor 3300v MultiService Security VoIP Load Balancer w/2 Module Slots (£289.98 ex VAT)

Load-balanced WAN Ports: Connect up to four Internet feeds for increased Internet bandwidth, fault-tolerance and redunancy. In basic load-balancing mode, the Draytek Vigor 3300V will distribute WAN traffic requests evenly. This means that if you have two 512Kb/s feeds, two LAN users can download at 512Kb/s simultaneously. Alternatively you can select traffic preferences for the load balancing, selecting specific Internet feeds for traffic types of traffic (e.g. VoIP, VPN), by source/destination IP address or TCP/UDP Port ranges.

2) Draytek Vigor 2930 VPN Dual-WAN Broadband Router (£150.08 ex VAT)

The two dedicated ethernet WAN ports can provide load balancing, WAN failover or bandwidth aggregation (increasing total bandwidth onto the Internet). High Speed total WAN througput of up to 70Mb/s is available, and IPSec VPN throughput of up to 40Mb/s. Extensive QoS support and comprehensive Web Content filtering features help you make the most efficient use of your bandwidth.

3) Billion BiGuard 50G Wireless-G Security Dual WAN VPN Load Balancer (£153.59 ex VAT)

Enjoy effective, always-on Internet sharing for all the PCs in your office thanks to load-balancing delivered by two integrated broadband WAN ports to ensure optimal bandwidth sharing, and provide network redundancy in case one of the Internet services fails. The BiGuard 50G offers flexible WAN connectivity via Cable, XDSL, or FTTX for video conferencing, data transmission, VoIP and bandwidth-consuming applications. Load balancing provides the ability to distribute the outgoing traffic across the two connections, and meet growing business needs requiring more bandwidth and network scalability so you can offer users Internet-business applications. The Auto fail-over feature can be configured for a second connection to assure redundant connectivity when the primary line fails.

4) Linksys RV042 4-Port Load Balancer w/VPN Endpoint (£93.42 ex VAT)

The unique dual Internet ports on the 10/100 4-Port VPN Router let you connect a second Internet line as a backup to insure that you're never disconnected. Or, use both Internet ports at the same time, and let the router balance your office's requirements between them for maximum bandwidth efficiency.

5) NETGEAR FVS124G ProSafe Dual WAN Gigabit Firewall Router (£84.06 ex VAT)

Dual WAN ports for maximum Internet connectivity. You can use both ports at the same time, and let the router balance your office’s requirements between them for maximum bandwidth efficiency.

6) D-Link DI-LB604 > 4-Port Load Balancing Router (£69.00 ex VAT)

One of the main differentiators the DI-LB604 has from most routers is its dual WAN ports. With the ability to connect up to two Internet connections, the total available bandwidth doubles in capacity and therefore provides a tremendous increase in network efficiency and user productivity. Dual WAN ports also provide a fast-acting failover response mechanism; if one Internet connection goes down, the other automatically takes control to ensure continuous network uptime.

7) Edimax BR-6641 (£229.03 ex VAT)

Auto Load Balancing (Inbound/Outbound). With real-time load sharing and load balancing, BR-6641 intelligent routing engine directs each session or connection to the best available link. BR-6641 can aggregate multiple connections and increases bandwidth by trunking various types of connection (Leased-line, xDSL, and Cable Modem) to form a single virtual WAN trunk. BR-6641 Provides 4 WAN ports for internet connection . The function provides you not only increase bandwidth but also backup internet connection each other. Whenever a link fails or is unstable, traffic is automatically re-routed to other healthy and available links to ensure uninterrupted connectivity. After the faulty link resumes functioning, on-line traffic is redistributed across all available connections to optimize the network performance.

8) ZyXEL ZyWALL 35 UTM Appliance (£349.99 ex VAT)

Dual WAN ports for WAN backup and Load Balancing.