It is essential that all locations have at least 2 Internet connections for resilence. However many sites require multiple low cost connections to get sufficent bandwidth.

Medusa includes load-balancing and many intelligent frunctions to enable resilience multi-crcuit use. Only Medusa makes this simple - you don't need qualifications to achieve this!

Load balancing with persistent TCP sessions for standard ("local IP") customers
Standard 4 circuits with multi-circuit management and options for 9 circuits
Circuit checking with automatic failover and alerts of dead circuit detection
Circuit Preference election for customers with applications that may not load-balance
Circuit Preference by service or protocol (eg VoIP types, sent email)

Firewall and Security

Medusa has a current compliant firewall, which is always updated for customers with SLAs to comply with the latest alerts from leading industry monitoring services (CERT, SANS etc). Your Medusa is always State-of-the-Art and does not age. The firewall is largely transparent in routine use and requires no operator intervention. Low-level logging outouts and diagnostics are available.

Components

Most Medusas uses just an appliance and some VLAN switches. We will advise on the style and performance of the appliance based on your centre size.

We recommend a leading low-cost VLAN switch available in data-only or PoE, 24 or 48 ports, and in 10/100 Ethernet and Gig-ethernet versions.

We also support a huge range of Industry standard switches and can take these over to be managed by Medusa, including :

Cisco layer 2 and layer 3 switches (most)
HP 2626, 2652, 2610, 2510 and other HP switches
Dell 3524 and 3528
Extreme 24C3 (check for age)
Others being added all the time

If we don't suport your switch, it can still be used in manual-mode.

Switches can be used stacked or un-stacked.

We can run converged voice and data (selectable by workstation), private networks and other special network types.

We also support a range of optic-fibre trunking of switches at all bandwidths. This means your switches can be distributed across floors, buildings or sites and still operate as one from the Medusa screens.

Types of Users and Networks

In shared and servcied space there are a number of standard users and networks, and Medusa provides easy explicit set up for all of these:

Standard customer network behind Medusa firewall ("local IP"), with optional forwarded public IPs
Standard secure customer network using routed public IP and customer's own gateway device (router, firewall, server etc)
Single secure and isolated user on tiked access (Hotdesk)
Shared resource networks called Utility (aka "DMZ") for printer/copier/fax/scan, servers etc
Special networks for infrastructure, eg IPTV, access control, security etc.

You can read more on this in the relevant sections.