When is Network Reliability Important?

For many businesses it is highly important that their internet connection remains online with as few interruptions as possible. These businesses include those who perform most of their business activities online and where these activities must be performed in a timely manner. These are not the only businesses who may require reliability, and if you are wondering whether your business is one of these, simply ask yourself the following question. Are you often frustrated with internet outages and do they impact your work? If so, yours is indeed one of these businesses.

Such network reliability depends on reliable hardware (such as routers) as well as internet connections and service providers. Unfortunately, all service providers have the occasional outage, but luckily network hardware can be used to ‘hedge your bets’ as it were. Using a router with Failover capabilities can improve the availability of your business’s network connection.

WAN Failover

High Availability Network Setup

A WAN failover (sometimes termed a 4g failover) is suitable for use when a business has one or more networks which require as little interruption as possible. This feature is available with Network Setup from Key Technologies.

A business may have both a primary and secondary internet connection. This generally uses one traditional copper line or NBN service and a secondary 3g or 4g dongle as a failover, though just about any second internet connection can be used. This secondary (failover) connection comes into use when the first goes down. For example, a business could have a prepaid 4g modem with no ongoing costs plugged into the router on standby mode. Thus, if the primary link goes down the router is triggered to bring up the backup connection. This can take up to 10 seconds, so there may be a brief interruption, but far less than what could alternatively occur. If you would like even less downtime than this, then you may want to ask us about WAN load-balancing routers.

Additionally, with Multi-WAN routers, you can choose when you want to activate the backup or failover service. An example of these options is shown below. You may failover when either:

• Any selected WANs are disconnected.
• All WAN’s selected are disconnected.