Tax forms and interoffice telephony networks have many things in common. Both are bafflingly complex and governed by an ever-changing, esoteric set of rules understood mainly by experts.
So when Chicago, Ill.-based True Partners Consulting (www. tpctax.com) sought to provide reliable backup to its VoIP network, the tax preparation firm found a refreshingly simple solution.
“We found a device that allowed our ISPs to failover seamlessly,” says Gerald Liebhardt, Manager of Information Technologies for True Partners. “It was more of a drop-in device that was transparent and handled our network’s complexity. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and get rid of our existing equipment.”
Liebhardt describes his department as a “one-man band,” with an intern and a handful of outside IT consultants to help him remotely manage True Partner’s seven branch offices scattered across the country. True Partners was founded in 2005 by several former Arthur Andersen employees. With more than 150 employees, the tax firm powers its VoIP with an office-to-office mesh utilizing both T1 and Verizon DSL lines.
To eliminate network hops, the firm’s network does not rely on a “hub-and-spoke” network model, where every call must first be routed through headquarters. Instead, the packet data from any VoIP call routes directly from one remote office to another.
But there were problems. Liebhardt’s full-mesh VPN did not intelligently reroute around any outage problems, while the T1 connection did not come backed with any quality of service or service-level agreements. Without the guaranteeing contracts, the VoIP service was unreliable. This was an untenable position for four-digit transfers from branch to branch, especially when customers facing tax deadlines needed reliable service.
Voice is held to a different standard than data. Customers will still tolerate a few spotty moments of regular Internet connectivity but expect telephony to perform at classic PSTN’s five nines of reliability.
In late 2006, Liebhardt performed a Google search on the Web and found Santa Clara, Calif.-based Aspen Networks ( www.aspen-networks.com). Aspen produces a suite of LAN switches and load balancers to better stabilize True Partner’s network.
“They were not bullet proofed against transient outages,” says Greg Tally can be reached at gtally@vonmag.com.
Dan Berger, President and CEO of Aspen. “They had a couple of particularly frustrating outages in Chicago.”
Liebhardt says, “I looked at their product line and said, ‘Huh. This thing is pretty cool.’” He contacted Aspen and was sent two load balancers for a trial run. Providing remote assistance, the Aspen technical team helped Liebhardt hook up the Aspen N2000 in Chicago and the Aspen 365-BRANCH at True Partner’s Tampa, Fla., branch.
The 365-BRANCH supports two to four Internet links (T1, DSL, cable, WISP) to or from each location with auto-failover for VoIP, inbound SMTP mail, inbound remote access (IPsec, SSL, and PPTP), and other applications.
The Aspen gear load balanced True Partner’s DSL and T1 circuits and promised to seamlessly switch between the two in case of an outage. Liebhardt also set up different voice paths and data paths to better manage the IP packet flow.
“The exciting thing for us was that this was not an upgrade to a VoIP network, but an addition to an existing telephony network. Voice was the driver behind the sale,” says Berger.
Although Aspen can remotely set up its devices, Liebhardt is a hands-on tech guy who saw no fun in that, so he downloaded an instruction manual PDF file from Aspen and configured the Linux-based boxes himself. He played around with the com-mand-configure language in the terminal, with Aspen’s tech team answering any questions he had.
“This probably wasn’t necessary,” says Liebhardt. “But I like getting my hands dirty. The installation was cost-effective with no major problems. The standard features began operating without causing any network disruptions.”
Liebhardt didn’t have to change his firewalls as part of the deployment. The N2000 interoperates with all popular third-party VPN routers that support IET/IPsec standards. He has since deployed Aspen switches at five out of seven of True Partner’s branches, with the other two scheduled to come on line in 2008. Liebhardt has even helped one of True Partner’s investors, Waud Capital Partners, install the Aspen products on its network.
Liebhardt was not sure about the cost savings or return on investment of utilizing the Aspen boxes.
“Things went–knock on wood–pretty well according to plan, other than a slight delay with the carrier getting some of the DSL lines turned on,” says Liebhardt. V
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