CloudLink vs self-hosted Bondix Server

CloudLink is a managed service operating Bondix servers in different geo regions around the world in a secure, highly available and reliable manner. This service is fully monitored, controlled and operated by Unwired Networks.

Routers can connect to this service in order to aggregate their uplinks and get full access to Bondix features without operating a server infrastructure yourself.

Alternatively you can operate a Bondix server yourself. Depending on your security, reliability and cost requirements, this document serves to ensure the right decision for your application.

Implementation comparison

Feature	Bondix self-hosted	CloudLink
High availability	None[1]	Fully highly available
Security	Hardcoded passwords and manual certificate rotation	Certificates with automatic rotation[2]
Monitoring	Your operations team	Fully monitored by Unwired Networks operations team
Authentication	Tunnel name + password or manual CA config	Certificates
Setup cost	Your time to setup the server and operate, update, monitor and securely maintain it	None
Operating cost	Servers + maintenance personell	Fixed monthly fee per device
Setup time	Your installation time	None/available immediately
Typical use cases	Small deployments, development and testing environments, company already has a full opertions team.	Low latency, high bandwidth, reliable production deployments for few to many routers

High availability:
- CloudLink is operated in highly available clusters with a minimum of 3 worker nodes per geo region in order to improve fault tolerance during:
  - hardware or software faults
  - software updates
  - system maintenance and security updates
- Bondix self-hosted running on a single VM will always have a single point of failure

Operating your own Bondix server

You can operate your own servers and virtual machines and install Bondix server and operate it yourself.

The main tasks required for a production deployment would be:

solid certificate infrastructure with certificate rotation
- alternatively assign passwords to each router/tunnel and rotate those regularly manually
operating a fallback server (which has to be in sync with the main server’s passwords and certificates)
solid client-side certificate infrastructure
- alternatively use hardcoded passwords
operations of the service:
- monitoring
- OS and system updates
- security fixes
- Bondix updates
quality assurance:
- testing infrastructure functionality before applying an update

While this makes sense for small installations, testing and development setups, and all setups with custom requirements or on-premise requirements, it needs a solid operational foundation to operate at scale and in a production enviroment.

Using CloudLink

CloudLink simplifies those challenges by offering a simple monthly-cost service that can easily be rolled out and is fully operated by Unwired Networks.

CloudLink is operated on a solid operational foundation in clusters around the world. The clusters are designed to handle very large bandwidth peaks and have sufficient CPU power to work under a wide range of production requirements. Our data centers peer very well to other local and international ISPs in order to reduce latency.

Custom geo regions

CloudLink is available in many geo regions around the world. For projects with geo regions that are not available right now, additional geo regions can be added. Please contact sales@unwirednetworks.com to learn more.

Contact

For any additional information about CloudLink, regional availability or technical consulting, including consulting about operating production Bondix servers please contact sales@unwirednetworks.com.