Why redundancy is critical for business continuity

As businesses come to rely heavily or even exclusively on internet connectivity, the cost of outages goes up. Network outages, whether they’re caused by basic maintenance or a failure, can lead to financial loss as well as loss of customer trust, not to mention stress for leadership and the IT department.

That’s why redundancy—the multiplication of network pathways that keep businesses online even if an outage occurs somewhere on the network—is a critical concern when choosing an internet service provider.

Why redundancy matters

Think of a semi-truck with duplicate tires. If one tire blows out, the second is there to ensure the truck doesn’t topple over on the interstate. Redundant networking serves basically the same purpose: it keeps data flowing in the event of some kind of failure. You can also think of it as a road system with multiple routes to get to the same place. If, for instance, a tree falls across one of those roads, you have one or multiple detours to get you to your destination.

By investing in a network that has strong redundancy, your business can succeed in the following ways:

• Continual uptime: Whether you’re running a hospitality business with customers and bookings to manage, or you’re in charge of a financial institution with personal data and constant transactions, you know that losing even a few minutes of connectivity can affect the bottom line.

• Trust: By keeping you online, redundancy keeps customers and employees assured that everything is running smoothly—and reduces complaints or calls to your support line.

• Security: A network failure can happen for any number of reasons, from a weather event to a cyber-attack. The last thing you need is to lose critical data. Even if the worst-case scenario occurs, your data will be safe.

Other redundancy considerations:

• Failover: The immediate (automatic or manual) switching from one network path to another—sort of like a rail operator hitting the track switch.

• Route diversity: Route diversity steers users clear of congestion and protects them from single-location incidents, such as construction or inclement weather events.

• Local routing: This is the shortest available fiber route to keep latency as low as possible.

What makes Ziply Fiber different?

Fiber internet is the future-proof connectivity solution: it’s built for huge data loads, ultra-fast speeds and resiliency.

Ziply Fiber’s locally owned and operated network is 100% fiber-optic and fully redundant. Our fiber backbone supports 100+ Gig and contains fully redundant local aggregation networks, plus routing to three or more paths into every major Northwest market.

Plus, our high-capacity network operates at 40% capacity, so in addition to possible outages, network routes have extra headroom to avoid congestion or overload. Diversification around data centers reduces the possibility of outages, our Central Offices are fully configured with 2N systems, and all our internet circuits include DDoS mitigation.

Finally, our network engineers and leaders are locally based experts who understand the opportunities and challenges of the region’s climate and topography.

Learn more about how Ziply Fiber’s networking solution can work for your business by visiting enterprise.ziplyfiber.com or calling 833.522.1229 today.