The Truth About Internet Failover Connectivity

Has your business Internet ever gone down? How long did it last? A minute? An hour? A day?

If you’ve avoided an outage, you’ve been lucky. Because, according to Gartner, the average business loses $5,600 per minute when their Internet goes down. That’s anything but chump change – adding up to over $300,000 per hour, or more than $2 million when you spread it across an eight-hour work day.

And that’s only considering the financial cost. A significant Internet outage can also mean a cost to your reputation and customer relationships too.

Can your business afford that?

An Internet continuity plan helps businesses avoid these kinds of costs. And that includes Internet failover connectivity.

What Is Internet Failover Connectivity?

The key word in Internet failover connectivity is “fail” – because failover connectivity is ready to take over when your primary Internet connection fails.

Failover connectivity lets you move from your primary connection to a backup or redundant connection with ease. In doing so, it lets you continue with business as usual, until your primary connection is up and running again.

That’s a sigh of relief for modern businesses. After all, when you rely on the Internet to fuel everything from Zoom calls and VoIP, to cloud computing and Internet of Things , you need to keep the day-to-day work on track.

What Else Do You Need to Know?

Still have questions about Internet failover ? Here are three of the most common questions– and our answers to them:

1. Does my business really need failover connectivity?

That depends on how much you rely on the Internet to get your work done, and whether you want your business to continue running smoothly even in the case of an emergency.

Ask yourself what would happen if your Internet went down for an hour – or, worse yet, a day. How well would your business operate? A continuity plan, including failover connectivity, will give you the confidence of knowing you’re protected if that happens.

2. What’s the difference between failover and redundancy?

We’ve written in the past about redundancy connections. So how is Internet failover connectivity any different?

It's not an either-or situation. Rather, failover connectivity works along with your redundant connection, through either a managed system or manual process that allows you to switch to your backup connection. Together, this process keeps your business running even when your primary connection goes down.

3. What kind of connection should I be looking for?

Of course, that means you need to have a redundant connection – and the type of connection you choose does matter. Think about it: if your primary connection and backup connection are on the same network and go out at the same time, you’re no better off than if you had no backup connection. That’s why many businesses choose a different service provider for their backup connection than their primary connection. And it’s why choosing a different type of connection also makes a difference.

Maybe that means opting for a wired connection versus your wireless primary connection. Fibre, satellite and fixed wireless networks can also provide quality redundant connections, if you have a different network for your primary connection. Talk to your service provider to find out the best options in your area.

Give Yourself Better Peace of Mind

Even if an emergency never happens, having a backup connection and Internet failover in place will give your business the peace of mind of knowing you’ll never find your entire business brought to a stop by an Internet failure.

And if that fateful day ever does come, you’ll be ready for it.

Want to learn more? Find out about our 24/7 BisBackup continuity plans.