You’re a business owner. You naturally want to avoid anything with the word “fail” in it. Just getting past the first five years in a small business is practically impossible. If you’ve done that, you really should pat yourself on the back. But as you continue, you’re going to need solutions that keep you in business. I don’t mean part-time, I mean all the time. And that includes something to deal with failover.
What is failover?
Failover may sound like something scary, but it’s exactly the opposite. It’s a safety net for the most important way you communicate with your customers. Here’s something to think about that’s going to give you nightmares: your business’s internet connection is a thin glass line about the width of a human hair. It’s also about as easy to break as a human hair. We can take that strand of fiber and wrap it in a sheath, put that sheath in a conduit, and hope for the best. But honestly it doesn’t take more than a poorly placed shovel to isolate your business from the rest of the world. When that happens, your phones stop ringing. Your internet stops working. Emails stop coming in. If your cell phones are connected to Wi-Fi, they’ll stop ringing too.
Failover is the solution for all of that. Period.
Failover means that there’s a secondary internet line, usually cellular, that automatically takes over when the first one goes down. It can be used for extra capacity when the main line is up, or it can simply sit unused. That second line comes in to a special router, and when that router detects that the main line is down, it switches all traffic to the second line practically instaneously. The net result is that your internet may seem slower, but it works.
Getting into the details of failover
It’s absolutely critical that you have some sort of failover system. But, these systems can be very manual, very automatic, or somewhere in between. For example, you could simply tether your phone to a wireless repeater and that could be your failover. But, that depends on you actually changing connections and everyone else choosing a different wireless network.
Far in the other direction, you could have a system that was completely automatic. This system could choose the best traffic method from at least two other sources, like another wired line and a cellular line, or even satellite internet. That system could also limit traffic of certain kinds in order to make the most of a slower connection. Your users could be limited to voice instead of video chat, video on web pages could be disabled, and large file transfers could be slowed to a crawl. You decide what the rules are and you get to control them.
It’s all in how you do it, and what hardware you use.
Choose systems from Cradlepoint, gotW3, and Marine Data Solutions
Signal Connect has products from several vendors that can help with failover needs. Cradlepoint is one of the leading providers of failover products for mission-critical applications. Their routers are specifically designed to let you control how that internet traffic is used when the main line goes out. Whether you’re operating a large network of people in different areas, in a mobile command center, or just in a single office, Cradlepoint has products that make sense when you need them.
For those who prefer a low-cost solution, routers from gotW3 might just be the right answer. The gotW3 solution gives you a cellular solution that gets the fastest connection from several available providers. It then gives you an Ethernet connection to your network. This would be a purely manual failover solution, but all it would take would be one person pulling a cable from one router to another.
Marine Data Solutions has unique failover systems for boats who need failover all the time. If you’re in the marina you might want to connect to their Wi-Fi. Up to 10 miles offshore you might want to use a cellular solution because it’s less expensive. After that, you’ll transition to satellite internet. Marine Data Solutions products let you move ahead without any problems, whenever this happens.
No matter where you go, there’s one place you can get what you need
Call the experts at Signal Connect. We’re certified in all the latest technologies and we can help recommend the failover solution that’s right for you. Don’t depend on just buying parts and hooking it up yourself. Let us help you choose the right option, and if necessary send installers to your site to get it done right. We specialize in a high level of service, and we’re here for you.
Try Signal Connect now! Call us at 888-233-7563, use the Chat button at lower right, or fill out the form below. We’ll work with you the way you want us to, no matter how that is.
