FROM THE REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT AT COMPUTERCARE
Of course you do. What kind of question is that to ask this day and age? Regardless of whether or not you host your own email servers, web servers, have all your applications under one roof, or sell your products and services online, not having a solid and reliable connection to the internet is not an option for any business – no matter the size. When businesses select internet options, they typically elect the fastest service they can afford with the highest amount of reliability. It just makes sense to have an always on (or almost always on) fast connection to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the connectivity that we rely on so heavily to conduct our business sometimes “goes away.” Internet outages occur – sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for longer. These outages can be caused by bad weather, equipment failure, human error, and more.
In North Central Florida, we experienced an Internet outage in July that blacked out a lot of businesses for the better part of the day. This outage had impacts on multiple carriers, in multiple areas, and on a variety of services – voice, internet, etc. Yet a lot of businesses were still online and saw very little, if any, adverse internet issues. That was because not all internet service providers use the same “pathway” for their connection to the internet, or some of them have multiple backup paths to which they can route traffic should their primary connection fail.
Businesses have this same option by utilizing the correct equipment on the network, and subscribing to multiple carriers. For example, with the right network router you can have your primary internet connection over cable (Cox Business, for example), and a backup line delivered over DSL (AT&T for example). The router would automatically sense when your primary circuit went down and would switch your traffic over to the backup circuit. Most of the time this occurs without you knowing, and when the primary circuit comes back online the router should “gracefully” move you back over.
Subscribing to two internet service providers does increase your monthly costs, as you would have two monthly internet bills. Compared to the costs of lost revenue as a result of not being able to do business, for many businesses, it’s worth the increased fee. For those businesses that would have a hard time incurring this expense, consider using a network device that can take advantage of a cellular hotspot. There are a few business grade routers on the market that have either a built-in cellular failover option, or can be paired with a cellular hot-spot (your cell phone can be a hotspot!) for “on demand” backup internet service. With some cellular providers you can actually setup a ‘pay as you go’ plan. This would provide you with internet redundancy while balancing costs. It may not be perfect, or what you would ever want to use for your primary Internet service, but it will get you through the outage.
Setting up your business to utilize a backup internet connection is not something that is that difficult to implement, just check with your IT provider, or equipment manufacturer to confirm what options are available to you.
MICHAEL REMER is founder and president of ComputerCare LLC, an IT services company providing a full spectrum of IT solutions and services to small and medium businesses.
