Cloud Services Demand Reliable Internet

With many services being moved “to the cloud”, this puts a lot of demand on businesses having internet connectivity that not only provides enough bandwidth but is also reliable and available when needed. We all know that things can go wrong from time to time, and that can impact on productivity. Having a service with the right Service Level Agreement (SLA) in place is essential. Being able to get things back on track as quickly as possible should things go wrong can also be save time of you have a single point of contact.

Planned Engineering Works (PEW)

Every once in a while, it may be necessary for essential work to be carried out to maintain or upgrade the network. Working with HM Network, we will contact you in advance via phone and email to make you aware. These Planned Engineering Works are normally carried out between midnight and 6am to reduce impact to business operations. We do appreciate however that many businesses rely on their connections around the clock. A notice may include wording like below, along with your circuit details and address.

This notification is to advise that a Planned Engineering Work (PEW) activity has been scheduled which may affect your network service.
The purpose of planned work is to enable essential core network enhancements or critical upgrades to be deployed.

We request that you take a few moments to review the details of the Planned Engineering Work notification so that you may make any necessary arrangements, adjustments or contingency plans to minimise any impact to your business operations.

If your business connectivity is mission critical, HM can provide a number of resilient variants, some of which would keep the lights on even during Planned Engineering Works.

BTnet – Resilience Options

There are numerous ways to provide resilience, depending on the level of resilience you wish to achieve, and different levels of resilience come at different price points. One of our most popular dedicated internet services for businesses and schools where downtime is not an option is BTnet, a resilience guide can be downloaded here.

Taking two services from two different providers may seem like a good idea, but is often not as resilient as you may think. There is a high probability that both connections will take the same route, be served by the same core PoP and local exchange and can present multiple single points of failure.

Also adding a second line AFTER the first line or existing line has been installed can also be not as resilient as you may think. We wrote a separate blog post on the matter here.

In order to provide full diverse routing, and get service from two local exchanges and two core PoPs, ordering what is known as RO2 (resilience option 2) is a great choice. This variant is commonly regarded as “belts and braces” resilience. When ordering an RO2 service, the provider can plan both routes at the same time to achieve separacy as much as possible, reducing common points of failure. The options below are what we offer on BTnet.

Single (Standard) Connection

• 1 Core Point of Presence (PoP)
• 1 Local Exchange
• 1 route to the property
• With or without managed router

Backup (Similar to failover)

• 1 Core PoP
• 2 Local Exchanges
• 1 shared route to the property
• 1 active line at any one time
• Normally with managed router
• Single Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
• Secondary connection normally smaller than the primary
• With managed routers
• Backup connection is typically on a smaller bearer to the primary
• The port speed on the backup is normally lower than the main service

Failover (RO2)

• 2 Core PoPs
• 2 Local Exchanges
• 2 diverse routes to the property
• 1 active line at any one time
• With managed routers
• Single Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
• Both connections are the same size bearers
• The port speed when failed over to the secondary would match what the primary was running at

Load Balanced (RO2)

• 2 Core PoPs
• 2 Local Exchanges
• 2 diverse routes to the property
• 2 active lines set up as Dual HSRP (essentially a dual failover and two active connections)
• Bandwidth available on both connections
• With or without managed routers
• Connections can be on same or different sized bearers
• The port speeds on each circuit can be the same or different depending on requirements

Note: Both of the RO2 options above have two local exchanges and two core PoPs so during Planned Engineering one service would remain active.

In normal everyday operation, if one RO2 service were to go down, the remaining circuit would pick up the traffic and IP addresses from the downed link until normal service was restored.

The further down the list you go the more expensive the resilience type tends to be. Pricing is made up from various elements and distance to a serving exchange can be a factor too.

Sometimes existing resilience types can be converted to provide additional throughput without the need to necessarily have new infrastructure installed.

HM Network Solutions

HM Network has been providing internet options and resilient internet connections to various customers, including Education, for over a decade. If you wish to look at your resilience options, feel free to arrange a call with our specialists, we can establish your needs and look at various options for you.

Please visit our contact page.