Ultimately services can fail for a variety of reasons: some of the causes of failure can be mitigated using equipment or service redundancy.
We often think of redundancy (or backup) in terms of the physical infrastructure that provides connectivity for our service. For example, some customers elect to connect using Enterprise Ethernet optical fibre and use a copper access service (FTTN) as redundancy, while others utilise Wireless Broadband as the backup for a fixed-line service. In each case there are advantages and disadvantages of these choices, depending on the risk of an individual failure scenario and the quality of connection to your site.
The Optus outage that occurred in early November introduced us to a different type of failure scenario: an organisation, or carrier-wide failure. Although the outcomes of enquiries into the outage will focus on the mistakes that led to such a significant incident, it is clear the impacts were wide-ranging, particularly for those customers that relied on Optus only for their Internet and telephony services.
We expect there were many Optus customers who were utilising an NBN service for their primary Internet access who would have implemented an Optus cellular broadband service for backup, similar to the scenario shown below. In more common failure modes, if the NBN access services failed, the cellular service would be used as a backup – however, the November 8 outage meant that both the fixed and wireless networks were impacted, meaning the intended redundancy was affected as well.
As an independent service provider, Netbright can assist you in choosing the most appropriate solutions to provide a high availability service. This includes selection of appropriate services to meet your requirements, including the use of diverse carriers. Through careful selection of diverse services through to the relevant carrier and site infrastructure, we can ensure that your business won’t experience the negative impacts customers around Australia felt on November 8.
To discuss your service availability requirements and the application of diversity using Enterprise Ethernet, Business nbn, Wireless Broadband and other solutions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.