Network uptime is critical regardless of business size. Some businesses may be willing to roll the dice with a single network connection that ideally (hopefully…) will maintain uptime consistently and keep the business humming along. But there’s also something to be said for not betting the house.
As businesses expand, so does their dependency on robust connectivity and their willingness to roll the dice — or risk an outage — often decreases. A single connection may no longer be enough to meet their needs. Increasingly, businesses are implementing an infrastructure with network diversity to combat downtime more effectively.
However, achieving true network diversity and network stability is a bit more involved.
What is network diversity?
Unlike network redundancy, which involves using additional devices or connections to increase network availability, network diversity ensures that these additional devices and connections are completely independent. These independent connections increase the network’s fault tolerance, or ability to maintain uptime during unexpected outages.
When a business has an infrastructure with:
- network diversity, its traffic travels on two completely separate logical networks;
- route diversity, multiple paths that do not touch or cross are taken back to separate POPs, hubs or COs;
- point-of-entry diversity, it has multiple connections entering physical locations through entirely different physical locations within the building;
- equipment diversity, the business has multiple pieces of switching equipment on premises at its location to avoid single point of failure.
Combined, these four critical types of diversity — network, route, point-of-entry and equipment — help to deliver network stability and may even be found with a single provider.
Finally, It’s important to note that some businesses attempt to create diversity by utilizing multiple providers, which is known as carrier diversity. Diversity from multiple carriers can be useful if a single provider’s entire group of connections experiences a threat to uptime. On the other hand, a single outage event still has the potential to affect multiple carriers — especially so if those carriers follow the same physical route or connect at the same access point.
It is also important to note if each of the carriers explicitly know the routes that their networks take back to POPs. You should ask your providers if they can you the exact route or path your traffic will take. If a provider is unable to answer with certainly, it can put the network diversity into question.
How does network diversity mitigate downtime?
A comprehensive approach to network diversity is the modern way to protect your business from experiencing internet downtime. Why? In the event that one independent network connection or device suffers an outage, another connection or device is available to carry network traffic and prevent any true downtime from ever occurring.
What’s the right call for your business? Research wisely. To learn how Everstream can customize your network connectivity to ensure multiple types of diversity, reach out to our team today.