Most businesses rely on the internet on a daily basis. If your connection goes down, how badly is your business affected?
In this modern world, connectivity issues can still be an issue for businesses. Even the smallest outage can have a serious impact on your bottom line.
When your internet goes down you’re left with no email, no new orders and no updates in the hope that it will start working again. If it’s down for a long period of time this can add to the frustration.
What is the price of business continuity?
Internet service providers don’t give you minimum connection promises on ADSL lines and even if yours does, it won’t guarantee that your line is faultproof.
Faults outside of your control, for example a power failure at your ISP, will also add to your losses even if it’s just one day that it’s failing. If an outage occurs for a very brief amount of time, imagine the impact this will have on your productivity and your business…
What are the options?
DrayTek routers provide connectivity features that have secondary connections available for a backup Internet connection.
In the event of a failure, a ‘Vigor2820’ router will automatically switch over to any of the following:
• A second ADSL or VDSL line, using a separate DSL modem and different ISP
• 3G cellular data using a USB 3G dongle modem (eg T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone)
• Analogue dial-up using a USB modem is much slower than DSL, but usable if your Internet connection is essential
• A cable-modem service (eg BT).
• ISDN dialup (single or dual channel) (‘S’ models only)
• Any other Internet connection via an Ethernet cable.
Once fixed what happens?
Once your main connection is restored, the router will automatically switch back to the primary source. When both connections are available, the router will use both connections so that maximum bandwidth is used. Examples of this include:
Load balancing
Load balancing increases your total Internet bandwidth. Load balancing can either automatically spread your internet traffic through both connections, or direct specific traffic through different connections.
Contended ADSL
Most people choose this as a backup connection. You will notice though that your connection speed is reduced using this method.
Using a 4/5G data modem
Not a popular choice, but it’s cheap. If you need to get online, at least you can with this method whilst you wait for your primary connection to be fixed.
Broadband does fail! So, how will you ensure your continued internet connectivity?
Paul Maxfield is group managing director of Network Telecom
