In today’s cloud-centric environments, the importance of the internet connection at the office has shifted. Critical services such as email, file hosting, and user VPN are more commonly hosted in the cloud rather than in the office, reducing the impact of the office internet connection being down, since email and file access will continue to be available from other locations with a working internet connection.
On the other hand, because most data and services are accessed online, very little data traffic stays within the office. Therefore, a strong internet connection is essential for employees to be productive.
Work from home has muddied the waters as well, since an office may not be fully occupied on a given day, and an extended internet outage can be countered by sending office workers home or to a nearby coffee shop. Every business has a different geographical footprint, tolerance for downtime, and operating revenue.
Here are some guidelines for how to choose the right internet connection for your business.
Availability
This is the #1 factor. You may be in an urban tech center with multiple choices of internet service providers (ISP), service level agreements (SLA), and steep competition among providers, resulting in plenty of high value choices. Or you may be in a building with a single broadband option that is oversubscribed and undergoes frequent maintenance. This factor is often outside of your control and is based on the number of consumers in your facility, ease of access to the building from nearby street locations and building codes and regulations that might be a deterrent or cost component for providers. Unfortunately, availability has a lot to do with what building you’re in, but hopefully this background can help if you are ever in a position to choose a new office location.
Quality
The quality of a circuit can best be summarized as a combination of the following items:
- Bandwidth
- Reliability (Uptime)
- Latency
All three are handled differently when it comes to the three main types of internet connection. Learn more about each below.
1) BROADBAND
- Most basic type of internet connection.
- Much more affordable, and widely accessible.
- Bandwidth offered is generally “best effort” and is commonly shared among a group of subscribers.
- Bandwidth values advertised should be viewed as the best-case scenario under ideal conditions.
- Cheaper equipment contributes to higher rates of failure, as well as the need for more frequent maintenance.
- Coax delivery often has unsymmetrical bandwidth because it prioritizes download speeds due to limited overall capacity, and the smaller on-premise equipment can't match the larger provider equipment's transmission capabilities.
- Readily available for a speedy installation.
- Providers often bundle other services, such as voice or TV, for additional discounts, which may be appealing to some businesses.
2) BUSINESS CLASS
- Medium-quality internet connection.
- Fiber or similar long-range infrastructure reaches further to the end-user/subscriber.
- Bandwidth is usually guaranteed.
- Better quality equipment in the path will provide more stability, higher uptime, and bandwidth is generally more symmetrical since the fiber media is within the building (or very near the building).
3) DIA (Direct Internet Access)
- Highest quality circuit available.
- Will often be fiber hand-off directly to the subscriber.
- Circuits are often spec’d to provide only minutes of downtime per month, with a monetary credit if downtime exceeds a given value.
- DIA circuits are highly dependent on availability of a provider in the area and cost depends on locale, provider, and bandwidth of circuit.
Redundancy
The best technical solution to hedge against any downtime of a given circuit is to use two circuits. The likelihood of two circuits going down at the same time is extremely small if care is taken to leverage different providers who use different paths to enter the building. A common approach is to combine the high quality and uptime of a DIA or business class circuit as the primary internet, and a low-cost broadband circuit as a backup, which would only be used occasionally and temporarily. Most enterprise firewalls readily failover to the secondary ISP path if properly configured, although there will be some interruption while the firewall ensures the primary is in fact down, as well as some websites that might be “sensitive” to the accompanying IP address change.
Concluding Thoughts
All of this to say, the requirements, and hence the cost, of different types of internet circuits vary widely for every business. A real-time service such as financial market status may justify a higher cost DIA, while a business that has less than a handful of users who primarily use web and email-based services, might do fine with a standard broadband circuit. In each case, the business must make the decision as to what is worth spending the money on to achieve a given operational environment.
Whether you need a thorough assessment of your current setup or guidance on the best internet options available, our team can help. You can click here to speak to an Align expert today.
Align's Workplace Technology group designs and installs the technology systems that keep modern workplaces running smoothly. This includes setting up office networks and Wi-Fi, installing audio-visual equipment for meetings and presentations, wiring offices for reliable internet and phone connections, implementing smart office technologies, and ensuring office security through access control systems. Our team plans these projects carefully and sees them through from start to finish.
If you have an upcoming project, please contact our team today: https://www.align.com/contact
