Taken from the word "necessary," Ecessa is the new name of a WAN industry veteran that for years has developed WAN link controllers tailored for small and midsize companies.

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Headquartered in Plymouth, Minn., the 40-year-old company used to be called Astrocom, but the name felt dated, explains Jason Breyer, vice president of sales at Ecessa.

“When we were founded in 1968, ‘Astro’ was word that companies used to identify themselves as forward thinking, next generation,” Breyer says. “Now it harkens to times past.”

Ecessa’s flagship PowerLink gear enables WAN and ISP link aggregation (multi-homing), load balancing, QoS and failover so companies can improve network and application performance and eliminate downtime. With Ecessa’s channel bonding feature, users can combine multiple and diverse WAN links (such as cable, xDSL, T1 and wireless) into one large network connection to provide greater available bandwidth and reliability.

In addition to a new moniker, Ecessa last week unveiled a new line of products that adds security and access control functionality to the core WAN traffic management features. Ecessa’s new ShieldLink family includes a built-in firewall and VPN gateway in a single network device.

Having an integrated firewall and VPN gateway is particularly appealing for companies that want to consolidate devices and reduce capital expenditures, Breyer says.

Incorporating WAN controls and security into one device makes configuration easier too, adds John Addington, Ecessa’s director of technical services. Many companies use Ecessa’s gear for VPN failover, and ShieldLink’s configuration options tie together both failover and security parameters. “Rather than configuring two separate devices for that functionality, especially if you have to consider multiple sites, you can do it on a single device at each site, which really simplifies things considerably,” Addington says.

Available today, ShieldLink can be purchased as a stand-alone secure WAN link controller, or as an add-on module for existing Ecessa PowerLink products.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.