Avoiding Internet Service Provider Outages

How many times has your business had to drudge through the headache of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) outage? Are these outages costing the loss of productivity or worse, a loss of profit? This problem is not unique to any one Service Provider, and the prevalence of these occurrences over a year is often staggeringly high. So, how do you avoid these outages? The answer to this question is often multifaceted but can be accomplished through the correct implementation of procedures and precautions within both your business and your ISP.

Often, the problem of ISP outages can be overlooked by business owners and employees. It can be a pain not to have internet service flowing through your organization, but the costs can often become staggering when tracked over the course of a year. According to Jeremiah Haley’s article How to Prevent Network Downtime,

“When calculating the cost of downtime, you need to factor in more than just the cost of fixing the problem. The real impact on the bottom-line stems from:

• Loss of data: 50 percent of employee’s report losing access to critical data during outages.
• Risking a security breach: Employees often turn to unsecured devices during downtime, which could cause sensitive company data to leak.
• Loss of Productivity: Downtime can result in 30 to 40 percent reduced productivity for employees.
• Loss of Customer Goodwill: If the downtime occurred during peak business hours, it could substantially hurt your dealership’s reputation.
• Loss of revenue: all of the above factors add up to substantial costs; including the revenue that your dealership could have generated during the downtime.”

Preventing Network Disruptions

Interlink Group understands this headache that businesses across the world face and continually seeks to prevent these losses that Haley describes. The first understanding that must be established is that there is no way to eliminate all factors that contribute to outages, but there are multiple measures that can be taken to minimize their occurrences and impact.

The first step in working to prevent issues occurring during ISP outages is to ensure that constant monitoring of your system is set up both by your ISP and internally within your organization. At Interlink Group, we are proactive in monitoring your network system, but this isn’t always true of all ISPs. Having an internal monitoring system ensures that all operations are functional and operating optimally.

Secondly, is the practice of ensuring that your business is integrating a secondary ISP as a backup. Interlink Group can work directly with your business to ensure that if your primary line of connection is interrupted, a secondary source can be initiated to ensure all essential functions are still operational. This integration can be done in a variety of ways, including a secondary 4g signal broadcast or microwave link that can reach a designated range of your choosing.

Having an ISP outage can be a major pain and in worse case scenarios, cause a loss in productivity, production, and profits. Interlink Group works with your organization by applying a customized solution that ensures that your networks are configured to your desired specification to eliminate downtime occurrences. This customized configuration and backup solution allow you to operate as normal, even in the instance that an ISP outage occurs.