When lives are at risk, first responders need to have complete confidence in their digital tools. Drones and video cameras are crucial to help improve situational awareness, but poor connectivity can render them ineffective.
Link bonding gives these vital applications the dependable connectivity needed to continue operating uninterrupted.
Link bonding, also referred to as link aggregation or WAN bonding, is the process of integrating many wired or wireless links, including satellite, LTE, 5G, broadband, Wi-Fi, and 5G, into a single, cohesive connection.
Principal Architect CTO APAC at Enterprise Wireless Solutions, Ericsson.
This increases bandwidth, strengthens the resilience of applications, and improves overall network performance.
If one link malfunctions or goes down, traffic is immediately rerouted over the remaining active connections, guaranteeing uninterrupted network availability.
Organizations like emergency services that need dependable, high-performance connection particularly benefit from this technology.
The case for link bonding in emergency response
Link bonding is especially beneficial when emergency services operate in places with fewer or unstable connectivity alternatives.
Through smooth failover across several connections, it reduces downtime and boosts resilience and dependability. In the event that one connection drops or fails (for example, a cellular tower goes down), traffic automatically switches to other links that are available without causing session or data loss.
This is essential during crises where infrastructure may be damaged, as it allows emergency services to maintain constant communication to plan responses and obtain vital information.
In addition to reliability, link bonding also boosts overall bandwidth by combining multiple links, enabling faster data transfer, improved video streaming, and better support for mission-critical applications like real-time video feeds and communication platforms.
Intelligent bonding also optimizes traffic distribution based on application priority, ensuring that essential services receive the bandwidth they need without interruption.
Load balancing in link bonding enables traffic to be distributed intelligently across all active links based on current performance and priority. Critical voice and alert messages get the highest priority, while less urgent data like administrative uploads uses remaining capacity.
Modern link bonding solutions further simplify network management through cloud-based platforms, providing centralized control and monitoring of all connections – crucial during emergency response scenarios.
A single dashboard provides real-time visibility into link health, throughput and latency. Operations teams can set policies, adjust priorities and troubleshoot issues from a unified console.
By leveraging a mix of connection types, including cost-effective wireless options, organizations can reduce reliance on expensive dedicated lines or singular satellite connections while maintaining high availability.
By pooling available bandwidth from various networks, link bonding can achieve data rates far exceeding what any single link can provide. This is vital for transmitting high-definition video from incident scenes, real-time telemetry
from drones or remote sensors, and large data files between command centers.
How link bonding works on the ground
Intelligent traffic management continually assesses the condition and health of every connection in the bonded link. The bonding technology then ensures continuous connectivity by dynamically rerouting all traffic from the failed link to the other active links.
This automated and efficient failover method gives organizations resilience and high availability.
Ericsson offers Cradlepoint routers designed specifically for link bonding with multi-WAN capabilities and advanced software that manages intelligent traffic distribution, failover, and load balancing.
These routers continuously monitor the health and performance of each link and distribute data streams accordingly to maximize bandwidth and ensure resiliency.
Emergency services can equip vehicles and command centers with these multi-WAN bonding routers, combining LTE/5G cellular connections with satellite or wired broadband where available.
This setup ensures continuous connectivity even if one or more links fail or become congested.
The silent hero in crisis situations
Link bonding gives emergency services organizations the reliable, strong, and resilient networking capabilities they require in the event of a crisis.
These organizations will benefit from an improvement in overall operational efficiency, guaranteed continuous communication, and accelerated data access by strategically combining various connections into one through link bonding.
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