Improving Internet speed & resilience
With the Internet becoming increasingly key for email / browsing / VPN, businesses are looking for improved performance & resilience. There are essentially 3 different technology platforms, each with their own strengths - so consider hybrid combinations too!
Private Circuit
It's always worth checking costs as this depends on your geography; typical costs for a 2Mb line are £5-8K per year with around £1,000 installation. Further, these lines have performance SLAs and their speed can be readily increased to 100Mb.
Dual DSL lines
Unquestionably the most popular solution given the immediate return on resilience and speed benefits Vs additional monthly cost. Provided you can get two different DSL carriers supplying your office location, this is particularly attractive where you already have an existing DSL line (as the overheads and investment are already 1/2 made). The benefit of the second line is to:
- Improve resilience (on the statistical basis that two carriers shouldn't fail at the same time). However there is still a single point of failure - the "local loop" from the BT Exchange to your offices which carries most services (including ISDN and leased lines!). Note: you need to be careful in selecting your two ISPs as they may both be using BT infrastructure which rather defeats the purpose! Carriers with their own equipment inside the BT Exchange refer to this as an LLU (Local Loop Unbundled) service;
- Improve speed. Whilst two lines can't provide load balancing (where the two line capacities are aggreegated), you can readily implement load sharing. This means you can segregate line functions: Line1 for browsing/email and Line2 for VPN. In the event that line1 fails, email and browsing will automatically switch to line2. In the event line2 fails and line1 has adequate bandwidth, remote users only need a second icon on their destop to carry on VPNing to the surviving Line1. It also means line1 isn't over-burdoned with VPN and nor are remote users impacted by browsing peaks or large email downloads;
- Minimise cost. You can now allocate different line characteristics to the line function. For example, Line1 = 20:1 aDSL 1Mb for browsing and email and Line2 = either an sDSL or 20:1 aDSL Max for VPN. But be careful, consider whether you would want Line1 to carry VPN in event of a line 2 failure....
- Mesh. Finally, consider failovers at both the office and each remote end so there are 4 different routes - gets fairly resilient!
Please consider buying a second (spare) router. They're only £150. It'll save 24 hours lapse time in problem-determination whilst a replacement is configured and shipped to you (carriers tend not to accept a line fault until the NTE/router equipment is replaced first).
3G
Great if you're in a 3G area and you're looking for nominal performance (e.g. chip 'n' pin devices - not great for VPN). Its main benefit is it completely side-steps BT infrastructure and any issues with land DSL servcies.
It can be a bit of a mine-field. We can provide all the services above, please just give us a call.