So what do you do when your broadband goes down…
My home/office broadband failed yesterday and it failed again this morning.. Did I have a backup in-place? Well, yes, although not as functional as I’d have liked. Am I now working on making it more functional? Absolutely!
Do you have a backup plan for office broadband failure?
Do you rely on broadband for your business? If you do, then do you have a backup in-place? If not, then why not?
The answer to that might well be that you simply don’t know how, and also that it’s not always as easy as it might be!
We all get very used to always-on high speed Internet access these days, so when it goes, it can be quite a shock! So what are the alternatives these days?
1. Run a 2nd broadband line to a different ISP. A good alternative, but what if the JCB digs up both cables at the same time – which is 100% likely if it’s a cabling fault of that kind… It’s very rare to get what’s called diverse routing of the cabling to an office unless you are prepared to pay a lot of money for it. Sometimes you can get it by using two different telcos – eg. BT and Virgin, but even then, there may be common points where both cables are physically close to each other, so any earthworks involving diggers is still potentially problematic…
2. Use mobile broadband. This is what I use. It’s not perfect and not always avalable, and not very fast either! Where I’m based in rural Devon with my O2 service, I can only get GPRS. In a city you may have the luxury of a 3G data connection.
3. Read a book.
While I did (3) above, I’m working on improving (2), so I may look for a separate USB “dongle” with a 3G connection to a network carrier that has 3G access where I am (Only “Three” as far as I can tell right now), rather than just using my Nokia E90, but then there’s the on-going expense, but what price do we pay? For the average home user it’s hard to justify. For a small/medium office? I think it should be standard, and more modem/router devices have USB ports these days for just such a device, so there’s little excuse!
And what of the fault itself? Well, according to my ISP, BT did a “re-map” of my line. Whatever that means. Personally, I think BT screwed up somewhere as the whole exchange went down, not just me!