One company is offering one box to service providers to connect all the services a residential user needs.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 11, 2006]

Newport Beach, Calif.-based Forval International is touting its ElipSwitch box to service providers. The company is a subsidiary of Tokyo, Japan-based Forval, which has been in business for 26 years and whose achievements include delivering a quality ATA to Japan's ILEC, NTT.

The ElipSwitch offers:

• Connections using any medium: wireless, T-1/E-1, cable, DSL, and Ethernet
• Basic firewall with support for external anti-spam and anti-virus
• LAN support for additional services
• Built-in VPN

The appliance is based on the architecture developed by San Jose, Calif.-based Jungo (which does its R&D in Israel), which in turn runs on Linux 2.4.

The appliance uses a 533 MHz CPU, with 128 MB of RAM plus 64 MB of Flash memory. It has 2 USB ports and 4 10/100 Ethernet LAN ports in addition to its 10/100 Ethernet WAN port.

"The goal is that the ISP need supply no user training," says Brian Manahan, vice president of product marketing at Forval International." If you want to connect an external hard drive or a printer, it should configure the setup automatically."

The company calls its auto config software ECCA, which stands for Easy Client Configuration Application.

The partner program
Forval is selling its devices through a partner program. Manahan says the company is committed to ISPs as the ideal sales channel, but details of the partner program are not available on the website (though the company does offer its ISPCON discount code [.pdf] on the site).

Manahan told us that the program allows ISPs to embrace the product with no up front cost. "It's a pure revenue share," he said.

Moving up to small business services
The company claims its four WAN port allows ISPs to offer additional services such as remote backup, ERP such as Great Plains, and other services that small business demand.

Nevertheless, in order to increase its visibility in the U.S. market, the company will need to devote more resources to its marketing and its website. On the other hand, the support section of the company's website is excellent.

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