The potential of a COVID-19 pandemic impacting our ability to operate in a ‘business-as-usual’ manner continues to rise everyday, making business continuity planning and execution vital. Ordering staff to work from home is an important step in preventing the spread of the virus and limiting a prolonged outbreak.
One of the most important and often over-looked components of a business continuity plan is the Internet service at the main location or head-end.
It goes without saying that reliable connectivity is important at the remote site or home-office, regardless if they are connecting to Cloud-based applications, like Salesforce or o365, or VPN tunnelling back to head-office to an on-prem server.
However, the key to a productive remote user experience is the quality of the connection at the head-end, more specifically, the loading speed: symmetrical vs asymmetrical.
Here’s why.
If your remote user is connecting to on-prem server at an office that has an asymmetrical connection (typically Cable or DSL connections), meaning the download speed is larger than your upload speed, 300 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up for example, they are only downloading (or receiving) information from the server at the slowest speed because that prem-based server application is uploading that information to them.
The problem with an asymmetrical service worsens on two fronts.
First, as the number of internal remote users is added to the network, due to forced quarantines for instance, the upload connection at head-office gets ‘flooded’ with traffic, bringing productivity to a standstill for those users.
Second, asymmetrical service-types are typically provisioned over cable/coax connections (like InfiNET from Sasktel and Shaw Business Internet) which are ‘shared’ connections, not dedicated, meaning the larger the user-pool connecting to the local service node, the more congested (slower) the service gets. In other words, if every Company in your business park sends their staff home to work, everyone connected to that service in your area experiences poor performance, which means lower productivity and a direct impact on your bottom line.
A cheaper, lower-grade service will cost you more in the long-run, especially during times like these.
FlexNetworks offers dedicated, fibre-based Internet connection, providing a steady, reliable, symmetrical service, ensuring your business always operates at full-capacity. For more information, contact sales@flexnetworks.ca.
