As enterprises expand, so does their need for an unwavering network that supports every aspect of their business. From data transactions to customer communications, network reliability is a non-negotiable element of operational strategy. With the cost of network downtime extending beyond short-term disruption to impact productivity, profitability, and brand trust, the stakes have never been higher for implementing a reliable networking system your users can depend on.
What is Network Reliability?
At its core, reliability in networking refers to the ability of an infrastructure to consistently and dependably support required functions for a given period of time. To test network reliability, organizations can deploy diagnostic tools and simulations that evaluate performance under various operational conditions, ensuring the network meets stringent quality of service standards.
The Difference Between Availability and Reliability
Understanding the distinction between availability vs. reliability is essential for building a robust system that effectively supports your stakeholders. Network availability measures system uptime, focusing on the proportion of time services are accessible, regardless of performance quality. In contrast, reliability assesses the system’s capability to operate flawlessly under expected conditions. Network reliability tests often simulate real-world stress conditions and load scenarios to validate this performance, making sure that systems are not only accessible but truly reliable when needed.
Consider a well-trafficked bridge: availability ensures the bridge is open to traffic, while reliability ensures it can withstand the load of that traffic without issues. Both are essential — a bridge that’s always open but unsafe is as problematic as one that’s sturdy but frequently closed. So, when weighing network reliability vs. available services, it’s clear that one cannot be effective without the other.
Why Your Business Needs Network Reliability
Network reliability isn’t just fundamental for maintaining current operations. It integrates with every facet of your business and is strategic for driving positive outcomes. A reliable network will:
Ensure Uninterrupted Business Operations
Network reliability minimizes the risk of disruptions to operational continuity that erode stakeholder trust and impact productivity. It’s essential to maintaining the critical uptime that high-stakes industries require.
Support a Seamless Customer Experience
If your business interacts with or supports external stakeholders through digital channels, a reliable network is table stakes for maintaining customer satisfaction, brand trust, and competitive advantage.
Facilitate Secure Data Transactions
For sectors where data security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, a reliable network secures the integrity and confidentiality of data, safeguarding against potential cyber threats.
Enable Effective Communication and Collaboration
With remote and hybrid work becoming a permanent fixture in the work landscape, a robust network supports effective team collaboration regardless of physical location, which is essential for keeping a business agile.
Foster Business Growth and Scalability
Network reliability is a cornerstone of scalable business growth. A growing enterprise needs the flexibility to expand its network without compromising quality of service.
The Backbone of MetTel’s Network Reliability
MetTel’s communication and carrier services are supported by a unique network backbone that maximizes the extensive coverage of the public internet with the robust security of private networks. This hybrid approach to data transport sets new standards in network reliability.
Redundancy and Failover
MetTel’s strategic implementation of redundancy and failover mechanisms is central to its reliable carrier services, dramatically reducing the incidence of black and brown outages. By integrating multiple Tier 1 providers into its network architecture, MetTel not only mitigates the risks associated with relying on a single provider but also uses this diversity of options to dynamically switch the load away from networks experiencing latency or outages to effectively eliminate service disruptions.
This solution leverages managed SD-WAN technology, allowing MetTel’s network to automatically route data securely through the best-performing networks available at any given time. Dynamic routing enhances overall reliability and maintains high performance even during potential network disruptions.
Monitoring and Management
If multiple Tier 1 providers form the backbone of the MetTel network, its monitoring and management system provides the intelligence that connects it all. Continuously monitoring all available network channels with predictive intelligence allows MetTel to constantly optimize system operations and direct data traffic over the best-performing networks on a day-to-day basis. Regular network consistency tests ensure quality of service by staying one step ahead of potential slow-downs.
Resilient Routing Protocols
While most resilient routing protocols provide efficient recovery mechanisms in case of network failures, our predictive algorithms can detect potential latency or outages and reroute traffic around disruptions automatically — before they even happen.
Load Balancing
Gone are the days of having idle circuits in reserve for failover. MetTel uses advanced load balancing techniques to distribute traffic evenly across circuits and enhance performance by dynamically and securely optimizing all available resources.
Security Integration
MetTel’s network security services support enterprise resilience with a proactive “clean pipe” strategy, filtering out junk data and potential threats before they reach an internal network. This preemptive measure fortifies existing security protocols and improves the efficiency and reliability of data transport, ensuring that only clean, secure data flows into the network.
High Bandwidth Capacity
As businesses move their storage off-premise or create hybrid cloud solutions, the need for increased bandwidth intensifies. MetTel’s converged infrastructure supports this transition by integrating enhanced data management with dynamic bandwidth capacity, allowing for a seamless expansion of data pipelines.
Scalability
In the same vein, the modularity of a hybrid network structure is inherently scalable, seamlessly accommodating growth to support operational expansion without network constraints. Coupling cost-efficiency with painless performance improvement reduces barriers to growth, offering an attractive win-win for businesses.
Traffic Segmentation
Just as virtualized storage allows multiple servers to operate on a single piece of hardware, MetTel’s network utilizes virtualized circuits, enabled by SD-WAN technology, to manage various data streams over a single connection. This capability allows sensitive data like point-of-sale and healthcare traffic to coexist securely alongside general WiFi traffic on the same circuit. By dynamically routing each data type according to its security needs and priorities, SD-WAN technology eliminates the need for multiple dedicated circuits. This simplifies the network infrastructure and enhances overall network efficiency and security.
Disaster Recovery
MetTel’s approach integrates disaster recovery into the daily operational fabric of the network, ensuring that businesses can rely on continuous and effective service availability. Instead of needing to maintain dispersed data centers in a system that fully replicates recoverable data in case of disaster, an automated network pulls redundant systems into one live ecosystem, minimizing the risk of failure and maximizing the value of those resources.
POTS Line Replacement
MetTel’s carrier network solution supports POTS replacement, leveraging legacy communication systems to apply the power of a digital infrastructure without the expense of replacing an existing analog system. With a turn-key solution powered by MetTel, businesses can improve service quality without extensive re-investment.
Protect Your Network with MetTel
Contact us to learn more about how MetTel’s managed network services can improve your network reliability and safeguard your operations against unexpected disruptions. Explore our enterprise mobility solutions and learn more about how we support IoT connectivity to build a resilient foundation that drives innovation for your enterprise.