This past week it was reported that business customers around the globe suffered unexpected network service outages when two of the largest public Internet provers, Level3 and Time Warner, encountered routing problems with their Juniper Network hardware devices.
The outage only appeared to last for less than an hour but millions were affected in the United States and Europe.
Problems for Multi-Location Businesses
The public Internet being down for an hour or a day is certainly problematic for any business that relies on access to public business solutions like SalesForce or similar services.
Public Internet outages are doubly problematic though for multi-location businesses that use the public internet to connect their offices over a VPN (“virtual private network”) that creates a “private tunnel” but still uses the public Internet for the connection.
For multi-location businesses using the public Internet for there wide area network VPNs, when the public Internet goes down, so does their access to all their other offices.
Private Business Networks vs. Public Internet VPNs
Combining the public Internet with VPNs was seen by many multi-location businesses as “step one” of a very good idea. Step two was to replicate the VPN using data transport facilities that do not use the public Internet. Viola! Private business networks were born.
While point-to-point private networks have been around forever, their high cost and lack of flexibility was what drove multi-location business networks to VPNs on the public Internet.
With today’s MPLS and “metro Ethernet” solutions however, multi-location businesses can once again enjoy the security they had with expensive point-to-point circuits along with the flexibility, cost savings and convenience of using a network that someone else owns and maintains.
Which Private Business Network to Use?
Just as multiple phone companies were stringing phone wires down every street of every large city at the turn of the last century, today multiple telecom companies are building out their own private data networks for their multi-location business customers to securely connect to one another without touching the public Internet.
The best way to determine which telecom company and private network is best for you is to consult ATEL. We know which companies are providing the best service at the best price.
ATEL also knows which carriers can be mixed and matched if that’s possible. Integrating different networks is sometimes required when even the largest telecom company does not have a private network that touches every location a larger business might have.
