VPN vendor StoneSoft is stepping up its push to sell its StoneGate security gear in the U.S.

The company, based in Finland, made only 20% of its sales in the Americas last year, but it does have interesting technology that maximizes the size of VPN trunks and boosts VPN reliability.

Called Multi-Link VPN, the patented feature bonds multiple Internet connections from multiple ISPs into a single logical connection between sites. So if one site has dual Internet connections and another has five, the devices at either end will sync up to use all the individual connections as if the were one to maximize the bandwidth available between the two sites.

If one of the ISPs goes down, the boxes resync to use whatever links are still working to create a new logical pipe. This makes it much less likely that multihomed sites will become isolated by the failure of an ISP network. The StoneGate devices also load balance among themselves and up to 16 of them can be clustered to appear as a single device to other network devices.

The boxes also include a firewall and an intrusion prevention system.

The company says it is revising how it finds customers in the U.S. by strengthening its ties to system integrators. StoneSoft sales people will find customers, determine they are interested in StoneGate gear, then call in an integrator to install and maintain the devices. The company is also better educating the integrators so they are more familiar with the products. That will make them more likely to bring StoneGate gear up as possible solutions in integrators' dealings with their customers.

With devices that range from VPN throughput of 8Mbps to 500Mbps on single, unclustered devices, the company's gear warrants a look from just about any size company.

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.