Not too long ago the thought of not having a redundant network link to ensure business continuity would have filled the company CEO with fear and dread. Especially, in Africa where all sorts of excuses could be found for being offline.
Excuses for incompetence would no longer cut it especially in the current marketplace where customers demand instant results regardless of whether your business is located in the Sahara desert or in the more tropical city of Lagos.
Using location as a reason to deliver subpar services is no longer acceptable. Hence, many African organisations have accepted their duty to deliver reliable services to their customers at whatever cost and utilising the very latest technologies.
Sadly, we have not quite arrived at a point where businesses, genuinely, expect connectivity to be close to 99% available let alone 99.999%.
All too often, the blame would 'lie' with the Internet Service Provider (ISPs). All the while, ISPs are just interested in selling the latest money-making packages to their customers but the underlying fact remains that the infrastructure is just not
capable of handling the job.
Progress is often defined as making the most of what is currently available whilst preparing for the new. So, the current solutions include exotic solutions involving the usual networking acronyms - MPLS, BGP, OSPF, dedicated link this, redundancy that.
All well and good but in practice these solutions can be very expensive to implement even if it is outsourced to another organisation.
This article does not suggest there is no need for a redundant link but rather it will highlight potentially cheaper options to ubiquitous solutions in the Nigerian market and Africa at large.
What is the purpose of a DR or Redundant Link?
1. Reliability of service.
2. Ensure you are never offline.
3. Regulatory purposes
Essentially, the main purpose of Internet Redundancy is to ensure your business keeps ticking in the event of a catastrophic failure in your infrastructure or that of your suppliers.
Therefore, if you have a main link provided to your head office via fibre, often organisations would (should) have a secondary link which ensures the network remains connected if the main link fails. The secondary link should preferably be provided by an alternative provider using a completely different backbone infrastructure, to ensure you are genuinely protected.
Let us pause at this point whilst I allow you consider what is truly happening within your organisation. There are some pertinent questions you should be asking the IT department:
1. Do we have a redundant link?
2. If my connectivity, provided through Link A, fails would Link B kick in? Is this automatic or is downtime to be expected?
3. Are both primary and secondary links from the same supplier using the same backbone? If so, why? Is this sufficient for the needs of the organisation?
4. Do we have a protected, reserved bandwidth in the event of a catastrophic failure?
5. Would the Service Level Agreements remain the same in the event of a failover?
6. Are these secondary links tested? If so, how often?
These questions should get your colleagues thinking along the right lines for genuine network redundancy with regards to connectivity.
In Part 2 of this blog I will be detailing some of the avoidable costs in maintaining both a primary and secondary link.
Why I think many organisations are wasting money and other valuable resources by not utilising the secondary link.
I will introduce a simple system that can help reduce your costs, as well as, let you utilise both primary and secondary connections at the same time. Yes! at the same time. You are paying for it so you should use it.
bluhivemedia is the sole provider of Broadband Bonding solutions, based on Viprinet technology, to Nigeria, Ghana and other West African nations. We have successfully implement this solution with many clients around the world. Our solution is considered by many to be the only option for bridging the digital gap for Africa. Contact us to know more.
- Uwa Ujam. (CEO)
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