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Cato announced today that it’s been certified as a connectivity partner of RingCentral, a leading provider of enterprise cloud communications, collaboration and contact center solutions. During certification testing, RingCentral found Cato could deliver high-quality voice even across lines with 15 percent packet loss. You can hear for yourself what that sounds like on this brief webinar.
The certification is just the latest example of why Cato is the perfect network for unified communications as a service (UCaaS) deployments. What is it about Cato that makes it so well suited for UCaaS? Glad you asked. Let us count the ways….
Minimize Latency Undermining UCaaS
It’s no secret that latency is the enemy of call quality. It’s also no secret that traditional networks add latency to UCaaS sessions, backhauling all cloud (including UCaaS) traffic to a centralized, secured Internet gateway. And once on the Internet, latency remains unpredictable as UCaaS traffic is subject to the public Internet.
Cato minimizes latency by eliminating backhaul and avoiding the unpredictable public Internet. Backhaul is eliminated by sending UCaaS traffic directly across the Cato network to the Cato PoP closest to the UCaaS destination. And as Cato and RingCentral share the same physical datacenters, public Internet latency is minimized.
Overcome Congestion and Last-Mile Packet Loss Degrading Voice Quality
Congestion, particularly in the last-mile, becomes a significant problem for delivering UCaaS over SD-WAN. Broadband connections are often used by SD-WAN to reduce last mile costs. But broadband connections are also oversubscribed, leading to dropped packets particularly during peak times.
Cato overcomes congestion and last-mile packet loss. Sophisticated upstream and downstream Quality of Service (QoS) ensure UCaaS traffic receives the necessary bandwidth to and from a branch office. Policy-based Routing (PBR) along with real-time, optimum path selection across Cato Network minimizes packet loss.
Avoid Internet Brownouts and Blackouts That Break UCaaS Sessions
Part of the challenge with bringing UCaaS over SD-WAN is the low uptime of broadband Internet connections. MPLS services are SLA-backed with five nines uptime. Dedicated Internet access (DIA) as well come with SLAs and significant uptime levels,but not so for broadband connections. Cable, DSL and other broadband connections are best-effort, delivered without SLAs
Cato overcomes last-mile availability problems by sending traffic across multiple last-mile links (active/active mode; other options, such as active/passive and active/active/passive are also available). In the event of a brownout or blackout, UCaaS sessions automatically failover to the secondary connection fast enough to preserve a call. Brownouts are also mitigated by various Packet Loss Mitigation techniques.
Secure Users Against Network-based Attacks
UCaaS quickly becomes a critical application for many organizations, which makes securing UCaaS against disruption particularly important. SD-WAN, though, relies on local Internet breakout, expanding a company’s attack surface. Without the necessary security capabilities into the SD-WAN, UCaaS and the rest of the enterprise traffic is at greater risk.
Cato addresses this problem by converging security services into the network. Next-generation firewall (NGFW), intrusion prevention service (IPS), advanced threat protection, and network forensics are converged into Cato Cloud, protecting UCaaS and all traffic from Internet-borne threats. All security services are available everywhere without deploying additional software or hardware.
Experience It Yourself
Those are the main ways we can help support your UCaaS deployment. To learn more about the Cato Networks and RingCentral partnership and experience first-hand Cato Network’s ability to deliver high-quality voice with even 15 percent packet loss, watch this brief webinar and demonstration.