These days, nearly every business needs the Internet in order to function. Outages, interruptions, and network failures can be catastrophic, losing sales, customers, productivity, and data security with every minute you’re down. And, for the majority of businesses, it’s often a matter of when—not if—they experience the emergency of a major outage or disruption, regardless of their size.

Is Backup Internet Really That Important?

The burning question is whether you truly need backup internet for your business, or if you can get by without it. We recommend considering the following factors when making your decision:

1. What Online Services Does Your Team Use? These days, a continuous internet connection is crucial for daily operations. Email and Messaging, VoIP Phone Systems, Cloud-Based Storage, Video Conferencing, and Payment Processing are just some of the things we need the internet for. If you use one or more of these, you should seriously consider having a backup plan to ensure they stay online.

2. How Much Money Can You Afford To Lose During an Outage? One Pingdom article estimates that a single minute of internet downtime can cost between $137 – $427 for small businesses, and up to $16,000 for larger businesses. That’s just for one minute. Switching to mobile data and using a hotspot is a common backup plan, but it’s simply not a viable solution for entire office networks and busy stores. You need something robust that will keep your team connected and productive.

The truth is that for most modern businesses, Backup Internet is absolutely essential!

How Does Backup Internet Work?

The purpose of Backup Internet is to prevent or reduce downtime in the event of an internet outage from your primary provider. Thus, the ideal Backup Internet connection will include automatic failover. With automatic failover, your internal network knows there is an outage and that traffic should start flowing through the Backup provider.

Most routers only support one internet connection, so you’ll need a special router called a Dual-WAN Router (WAN=Wide Area Network, a common telecommunications term). This router can take multiple ISP connections and can be configured to send traffic across either ISP as needed.

Some Dual-WAN Routers can even be configured to send traffic simultaneously across both ISPs. Maybe you want just video streaming or phone traffic on one provider, and crucial operations on the other. Or you want to load-balance across both. There are many possibilities with a Dual-WAN setup.

Airosurf’s Solution

Our internet service is wireless, making it the perfect backup to traditional cable or fiber internet. Airosurf Wireless Internet technology doesn’t have the same vulnerabilities as cable or fiber, such as lines getting cut or dug up. It utilizes a completely different infrastructure, giving you the best possible redundancy.

To simplify the Dual-WAN Router requirement, we offer our own managed router, included for free with Backup Internet, to provide automatic failover and other optional features like simultaneous traffic.

Our Backup Internet product also includes access to our remarkable support team. Having issues but not sure what’s going on? We can leverage our Backup connection to remotely run tests and help identify what the problem is.

Contact Airosurf Communications to learn more about Backup Internet!