Highly Available Internet Border Systems Survey and Reference Model

The exponential growth of organizations connecting to the internet increases the demand and expectations for technology professionals to provide highly available (HA), adaptable, always-on internet and network connectivity services to the enterprise. The rapid adoption of prevailing technologies and initiatives such as cloud-based workloads, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and digital transformation are fueling the growth. Organizations rely upon hardware, software, processes, and people, which form internet border systems. Internet border systems provide internet connectivity and access to external network services and resources. Despite the enterprise's increased connectivity demands, a standards-based model, blueprint, or reference architecture for designing and deploying HA internet border systems does not exist. This paper proposes creating a standards-based, modular, and reproducible HA internet border system model. The internet border model will provide a frame of reference and enable always-on, automated, resilient, and self-recovering internet border connectivity services for enterprise networks. The reference model will assist technology professionals in planning, designing, creating, and deploying HA internet border systems for enterprise networks.