CREDIT UNION DEPLOYS ECESSA'S WAN LINK CONTROLLERS.

Ecessa, Plymouth, Minn., a leader in affordable WAN link controllers for small-to-medium sized enterprises (SME), has announced that Hutchinson Credit Union has selected Ecessa's PowerLink WAN link controller to provide automated load balancing and failover for its multiple ISPs and network circuits. With PowerLink, Hutchinson is able to ensure reliability of its Internet connectivity with multiple areas of redundancy and without depending on a single Internet Service Provider (ISP), Hutchinson is increasing the availability of its web-based applications used by employees and members.

Hutchinson now utilizes three Internet connections from different service providers, including two DSL circuits and one business-class cable link. If there is a problem with a service provider or an outage, the PowerLink enables Hutchinson to have the flexibility to add or remove network connections and ISPs as needed without affecting users. With PowerLink, the Credit Union is able to maximize all three network circuits for both inbound and outbound traffic, and they can also control their own DNS, rather than having it hosted by the service provider.

"PowerLink has enabled us to have quite a bit of redundancy on many fronts," said Zack Clobes, IT Manager for Hutchinson Credit Union. "We have three different ISPs, each coming in from different locations, and two different technologies so that we are not solely dependent upon the telephone company. In the future we may consider adding a wireless link to diversify even further."

By deploying the PowerLink, Hutchinson is now able to optimize network bandwidth. Previously, bandwidth was wasted and not properly used because it was not connected to certain circuits and routers. They are now able to take advantage of the total aggregated network bandwidth among each network circuit, enabling them to leverage their entire bandwidth capacity. Connectivity is now improved for thousands of clients that rely on the Hutchinson website for online banking, and filling out forms for various applications and financial services, as well as its employees dependent upon business-to-business web-based applications such as facilitating car and property evaluations, mortgage servicing and loan applications.

"Financial institutions such as credit unions need to keep ...