Opnix's Orbit 1000 Routing Intelligence System is designed to optimize IP connectivity for enterprise customers in data centers and other significant deployments.

by Wayne Kawamoto [November 30, 2001]

Opnix Inc. announced that its new Internet route control service and product is generally available. According to the company, its Orbit 1000 Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) is a revolutionary new technology that lets customers route data traffic according to their own performance and business policies.

First deployed in November 2000, Opnix says that its Orbit 1000 technology is the first and only routing optimization solution that is available either as a monthly service or as a one-time product purchase.

Orbit 1000 is designed to improve the performance and efficiency of the Internet's middle-mile by proactively monitoring all known IPv4 routes across all available carriers, and rating every route to find the fastest, most reliable paths between all points on the Internet. The company claims that customers can speed up their network performance by as much as 300 percent by avoiding middle mile bottlenecks and can reduce significant network costs by applying business policies such as load balancing between expensive and inexpensive ISP links.

Opnix says that its breakthrough technology actively probes all IPv4 routes for real Internet traffic conditions. This dynamic intelligence is also applied to customer routing tables to optimize traffic flow for cost and performance. The complete Orbit Routing Intelligence System has two components: the Orbit 1000 CPE, and the Opnix CORE (Central Optimizing Route Engine), which work together to provide a system of Internet intelligence and dynamic Internet-wide routing knowledge. This should allow all Orbit 1000 customers to automatically use the best possible routes even as Internet conditions change.

The Orbit 1000 is attached as a BGP peer to the customer's router and is not placed in the traffic stream. As a result, Opnix says that the Orbit installation is non-intrusive and there is no need for logical or physical changes to customer networks. Typical installations should be completed within four hours. Since all the computation occurs in the Opnix CORE, issues concerning local database or CPE scalability may be avoided.

According to the company, the Orbit 1000 puts IP Traffic Management within reach of service providers, which should enable them to better manage their bandwidth resources at a reasonable cost. The Orbit 1000 is currently in evaluation at several large ISPs, financial brokerage companies, and content providers. With the Orbit 1000 Service offering, companies may be able to benefit from intelligent routing without having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront for a solution. The Orbit 1000 CPE supports up to 10 carriers at a customer data center.

"The trend in Internet infrastructure is to move away from raw capacity and speed to intelligence," said Rajeev Arora, Opnix's VP Sales & Marketing. "Opnix is the first company to produce a dynamic routing intelligence service and product based on real-time Internet traffic conditions. The end result is that network engineers can speed up their network performance, even as they reduce their monthly bandwidth expense. Performance Routing allows customers to deploy new latency and packet loss sensitive applications such as VoIP, Internet VPNs and Videoconferencing."

"Unlike traditional routing software, which fails to optimize packet routing, Opnix's Orbit 1000 is one of several next-generation products changing Internet Infrastructure by proactively measuring real route performance," said Teresa Bracco, senior analyst at Current Analysis. "Routing based on business needs and ISP performance is revolutionary and should be considered by all multihomed entities," explained Jennifer Liscom, principal analyst at Gartner Dataquest.

"Any ISP who is multihomed and running BGP4 today is paying more than they have to for sub-par routing performance," said Rajeev Arora. "Opnix's Orbit 1000 product allows them to reduce their monthly bandwidth expense by allowing them to use the cheaper carrier within performance tolerances. Plus they can increase their network performance two to ten times by routing around traffic bottlenecks on the Internet."

Pricing and availability
Orbit 1000 is available for shipment immediately with pricing starting from $20,000. Each CPE unit can support up to 10 carriers at a customer data center.

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