In today’s world being connected to the Internet on a reliable basis is a must for all businesses. Cloud computing has given us greater mobility than ever before and we can sign into video conferences on our phones, collaborate on presentations from a laptop or edit a file on a tablet on the sidelines of your child’s soccer match. Yet all these things rely on a reliable internet connection. But what happens if that Internet connection fails?
Most people don’t think an Internet outage will affect them or if it does, it will be fixed quickly. In July of 2022, businesses across Canada ground to a halt as a botched maintenance update by a large internet service provider (ISP) hobbled more than 10 million customers. About one-quarter of Canada’s internet capacity was offline and the downtime lasted at least 12 hours with some customers experiencing problems for days afterwards.
The ISP provided both Internet access as well as mobile phone services so the list of impacts this outage caused is long and includes:
- point-of-sale payments failing
- online ordering not working
- unable to pay invoices and staff
- lost contact with clients and suppliers
- no phone calls – both landline and mobile
- security systems down or not able to be monitored
There are many similar outages experienced across the globe affecting users on both large scale incidents as well as those on a smaller and more localised scale.
The moral of the story is if you rely on a single internet provider and / or a single internet connection, you could be left high and dry if something goes wrong.
What can we learn from this? Businesses should prepare a backup.
Building a backup plan for lost internet
Setting up a secondary internet connection can help your business remain online. For this to work, you will need to partner with a different provider than you do for your primary internet. This will reduce the odds that both your main and backup internet will go down at once.
If your primary internet connection is wired, consider a wireless backup. For example, a router with a 4G / 5G backup, would switch you to that network if the main connection fails.
The very nature of redundancy is that it duplicates what you already have. That can make some businesses balk at paying twice for the “same” thing. Yet internet redundancy can help you avoid lost business, productivity and brand reputation. Plus, it will reduce your stress levels while speaking to your internet provider’s support team while also trying to do business in this digital age without being able to get online.
Depending on your needs and budget, your setup could just use the secondary connection as a failover or it can also be used to boost your current internet speed. Speak with us to discuss the different options as we can bond two or more internet connections to provide redundancy and increase your speed.
With the ubiquity of technology today, it is very likely that more ISP outages will happen. Be ready for the worst with plans for redundancy and contingency plans. Our experts can help you cut the risks of inevitable communications failures so contact us today.
