GOC

Critical Links (News - Alert), a provider of converged ICT (Information and Communications Technology) solutions for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs). recently announced availability of new value-added features in its flagship product, the edgeBOX. The features, as part of release 4.6, provide edgeBOX users with new, higher levels of fault tolerance and security, while simplifying provisioning and making the product easier to use. The new release also expands the number of hardware devices supportable by edgeBOX.

 

Abdul Kasim, Vice President of Global Marketing and Business Development, said, “We’ve announced a new release of functionality in our box. We added features and augmented existing ones. Our edgeBOX consolidates telephony – basically VoIP – and some data services as well as some IT applications. It has a fully-fledged IP PBX (News - Alert), it has some security, a NAC, some Quality of Service [QoS], storage, a WiFi access point, and some collaboration applications. It has all of the functions and Small and Medium-sized Business (SMB) would typically require. It all runs on a Linux platform using open source code for the most part. We also have a common GUI so you can very easily access, provision and manage all of the different functions. We also have three different variants of our appliance for different-sized companies: 40 users, 100 users and 300 users. There are also a number of LAN and WAN interfaces.”

 

Critical Links’ edgeBOX is a multi-service business gateway appliance, which provides a complete VoIP/ IP-PBX and a host of data and IT services in a single device, while dramatically reducing complexity and deployment costs. Highlights of the new features in release 4.6 include the following:

 

Fault-Tolerance: The edgeBOX offers a hot stand-by option that allows customers to have complete 1-on-1 redundancy for the entire platform. Employing this option eliminates a single point of failure, which is of particular concern to SMBs whose entire communication & IT infrastructure is increasingly deployed on a single physical unit.

 

Now with 4.6, the edgeBOX also has a hot stand-by-option for the spare RAID, and it can be replaced without operational impact.

 

Security: edgeBOX 4.6 supports full port-based authentication based on IEEE 802.1x and can be deployed in a VLAN based wired and wireless infrastructure (based on IEEE 802.1Q).

 

edgeBOX 4.6 also introduces numerous security features that allow for a finer level of control of user access, as well as protection from viruses.

 

Provisioning and Usability: The edgeBOX IP-PBX can now be automatically configured for phones from Aastra (News - Alert) and Polycom; in fact, using the phone itself, configuration can be done instantaneously. The voice prompts can be customized, and FXO (analog) lines can be configured using parameters such as TX/RX gain, Echo cancel and Wait dial tone. The IP-PBX also supports the EasyLink external billing solution.

 

Being VLAN aware also means temporary/guest accounts can be set up very quickly on the system without setting up complex profiles.

 

The edgeBOX 4.6 system clock can be synchronized with a remote NTP server.

 

Hardware Support: The edgeBOX IP PBX now supports additional hardware - E1/T1 and analog cards from Sangoma and Digium (News - Alert).

 

The edgeBOX replaces up to eight specialized solutions with a single integrated device, providing SMB customers with a complete networking infrastructure that is simple to install and configure, easy to maintain and upgrade and can be managed remotely. Customers can leverage edgeBOX™ services ranging from VOIP, IP-PBX, VPNs, security, NAC and QoS as well as web server, email server and data storage. It is available on a range of scalable platforms that support up to 300 users.

 

The edgeBOX is delivered to SMBs through Critical Links’ global network of resellers, service providers and OEMs. Hundreds of edgeBOXes are deployed all over the world and are currently supporting thousands of users.