Last week I wrote about keeping your Small Business IT resilient, so that the little failures don't bring your business to it's knees. Having covered how to make your server resilient, lets look at how to ensure an ISP outage doesn't cost you money.
My experience of Business ADSL services isn't great, having seen outages occur with big providers and small providers. It doesn't matter whether you go for the cheapest Tiscali option (not personally recommended) or the most expensive Datanet package, there is always the possibility of failure.
To protect yourself against the cost of ISP network outages, put in a backup. This isn't a difficult or as expensive as it sounds, though there is a bit of technical trickery to be completed, so it's best to have a techie to hand.
Resilient Internet Connections
In practise it's quite simple.
- Replace your existing ADSL router with one that has a second backup interface, like the Draytek Vigor2820 ADSL Router, and connect to your existing ISP via this ADSL router.
- Purchase a 'backup' phone line and Business ADSL account with another ISP.
- Purchase an ADSL modem with an ethernet port, configure it to connect to your backup ISP, plug the ADSL line in to the wall and and ethernet cable to your backup interface on your main router.
You now have two internet connections; normaly you run on your original ISP ADSL connection, but the backup will automatically kick in if the main line fails. If there is a failure on both connections then it's most likely that there has been a major outage, either locally or regionally (both normally due to building contractors cutting through a line!), and there's almost nothing you can do about that.
Resilient Email
If you have your email hosted in house, there is an additional step to make sure that when you're using the backup connection, everyone can still send you email. To do this, have whoever manages your DNS setup what's called a 'secondary MX record'. This is like a note on the front door saying "If no answer, leave post at No. 32". It means email for your company will start coming into your mail server via the backup ADSL line, instead of bouncing off the main one when it's down.
Resilient Website
If you're very ambitious and have your web server hosted in house you can still have your website visible when the backup connection kicks in. Using Zone Edit's failover service you can nominate a second hostname to redirect web traffic to.
Costs
These options aren't hugely expensive;
- BT Phone Line and Business Broadband Option 1 £436.32
- Draytek Vigor 2820 Series ADSL Router £124.99
- Basic ADSL modem with ethernet interface £20.52
Total cost for protection against your internet connection going down is less than £600. If you think that's expensive, consider the amount that your staff use the internet for work, how much of your
communication with customers, partners and suppliers is via email, and imagine a morning, or a day, or even a week without internet access. It's food for thought!
Richard Bartlett offers expert and independent IT Consultancy Services to review your IT, help buy the right systems, install them, train your users to use them, and ensure you have appropriate IT Support. For more information on services including installation and configuration services which can give your systems resilience see http://www.rgbartlett.co.uk/services/
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