Once data is transmitted to the VAN, it could be distributed by the VAN to the trading partners, but for a price. Most all VANs charge by the number of characters transmitted. It has been determined that a combination of sending and receiving more than two million characters per month justifies the cost of direct communication. The most noticeable benefit of direct communication is savings. However, sending and receiving data directly should not result in lost functionality, such as an audit trail.
Monitoring is another feature that is often overlooked when implementing direct communication.
Benefit of Both Direct communication and VAN services can be used together. In this scenario, direct communication would be configured as the primary method, with the VAN configured as a backup. There are several ways for configuring a system to use the VAN as a backup. One might be to use a direct connection and switch to send to the VAN after five unsuccessful attempts. When Communicating Directly Options considered today include leased lines, Internet, frame relay, and POTS lines.