Astrocom
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| Astrocom Corporation | |
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| Type | Private |
| Founded | 1968 |
| Headquarters | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| Key people | CEO: Ronald Thomas |
| Industry | Technology |
| Products | Networking |
| Website | www.astrocorp.com |
Astrocom is a privately held company that provides redundant Internet access appliances for the small and medium enterprise market (SME). The company’s products are designed to improve network performance and eliminate downtime for business-critical, time-sensitive applications. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minn., the company markets its products directly and through resellers in North America, Europe and Asia.
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[edit] Company Evolution
Astrocom incorporated in 1968 to design, manufacture, and distribute telecommunications equipment for local area networks (LANs). From 1971-85, the company acquired several companies to expand its data communications product base, including Edison Circuit Board Manufacturing, Custom Printed Circuits and Complexx Systems, Inc. By 1989 Astrocom had developed several high-speed digital access communications products that linked facilities through wide area networks (WANs).
In 2000, Astrocom refocused on incorporating WAN failover and load balancing technology in an appliance located at the LAN gateway, and developed the PowerLink™ line of products. In 2003, Ronald Thomas, who joined the company as CEO in 1997, initiated Astrocom’s transition to becoming a privately held company. A year later, the company completed that reorganization. Today, Astrocom is leveraging several of its key technologies to develop new solutions for VoIP, public access, and advanced quality of service and traffic management applications.
[edit] Product Overview
The company's PowerLink™ products ensure redundant Internet connections for 100% uptime. Astrocom’s appliances are lower-cost alternatives to devices from competitors such as FatPipe, Radware and F5 Networks. Astrocom’s technology, its U.S.-based service and support, and service and warranty programs have made PowerLink products a popular choice for Internet networking by the SME market with 5,000 PowerLink products at customer sites around the world.
[edit] Product Functionality
The PowerLink Pro™ line of multihoming WAN link failover and Internet load-balancing appliances[1] guarantee Internet high availability. Incorporating traffic management technology, these products provide organizations of all sizes a way to improve network performance and eliminate downtime for business-critical applications.
PowerLink™ products bundle up to 15 WAN lines (T1, xDSL, Cable, ISDN, Wireless, Satellite, etc.) into a single virtual wide-pipe for up to 150 Mbps of aggregated bandwidth that provides ISP failover and redundancy. Unlike dual WAN routers and other applications, PowerLink handles both inbound and outbound failover and Internet load balancing, and uses intelligent load balancing to monitor bandwidth availability throughout the network and assign traffic to the link with the greatest available bandwidth. If an active machine fails, PowerLink's hardware failover feature automatically transfers the workload to a second, idle machine. PowerLink's Quality of Service (QoS) feature reserves bandwidth for time-sensitive traffic such as voice and video.
PowerLink sits between the LAN and WAN. Depending on the model, PowerLink™ products provide:
- WAN link redundancy for ISP failover and Internet high availability among as many as 15 links for important internal and customer applications.
- Traffic load balancing (both inbound and outbound) from network for bandwidth aggregation of up to 500 Mbps.
- Point-to-point channel bonding among as many as 40 locations, providing uninterrupted Internet access for reliable performance of applications like VPN and VoIP.
- Redundant hardware failover and monitoring capabilities for mission-critical applications eliminate all potential single points of WAN link failure.
- QoS capabilities for bandwidth management that guarantee the most critical applications get the bandwidth aggregation required for smooth, consistent performance.
All PowerLink products come with 90 days of free service and support from U.S.-based factory technicians, a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a three-year depot warranty.
[edit] Products
The PowerLink Pro50/Pro100/Pro250™ redundant Internet access appliances provide ISP failover on inbound and outbound traffic with intelligent traffic load balancing.
The PowerLink Pro55/Pro200/Pro55/Pro250hq™ are designed for multiple locations needing site-to-site channel bonding. In addition to ISP failover and load balancing, these models offer "Virtual Tunneling Technology" for WAN link channel bonding among as many as 40 remote sites and bandwidth aggregation up to 500 Mbps.
