The Internet has a robust top-tier network infrastructure, with the world’s largest telecommunications providers peering to ensure that any packet from any place on Earth can get to any other place on Earth. The inherent design of the network is self-healing. If a path goes down, the core routers will find an alternative path from source to destination. This is all automatic and distributed throughout the Internet. Many of the performance limitations experienced by businesses and individuals are more related to the access networks than the core of the Internet itself.For sure, the lack of determinate paths, quality of service mechanisms, and latency minimization does pose some limitations on Internet performance related to real-time processes. That’s especially true for two-way voice and video. That, plus transient congestion issues and inherent security, is what drives the expansion of content delivery networks and private IP networks. Even so, for e-commerce, public information distribution, email communication, team collaboration, remote workers, and many other needs, using the Internet is the most economic connectivity option if not the only one that makes sense. There’s no reason you can’t leverage the power of this enormous public resource with the right access service.
The gold standard for Internet connections is called DIA or Dedicated Internet Access. What dedicated means is that there is a certain amount of bandwidth dedicated to your exclusive use from your business location, through your Internet service provider and out to the Internet.
But aren’t all Internet connections dedicated? Not by a long shot. Virtually no residential Internet services, mobile broadband or bargain-rate Internet services sold to small businesses are dedicated. Instead, they are what is called “shared” connections. You and a few dozen to a few hundred of your fellow broadband users share a block of dedicated bandwidth between your location and your Internet service provider.
Why is this done? Simply to reduce the cost of service to make it more attractive. Many users, especially individuals, prefer low cost to guaranteed performance. They don’t mind so much if files take varying times to download or that VoIP audio has some distortion or hiccups. They’ll certainly be frustrated if their “best effort” Internet service goes down for a few hours or, in extreme cases a few days or weeks, but that won’t drive them to spend more for professional grade DIA.
Any business using the Internet for more than casual access can’t tolerate varying and indeterminate performance. The costs of lost business and productivity mount up faster than the cost of digital line services. That’s why serious businesses quickly turn to dedicated connections with service level agreements to ensure maximum availability as well as bandwidth. That bandwidth ranges from T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper broadband up through SONET and Carrier Ethernet over fiber optic connections. What you need depends on your particular situation. It could be anywhere from 1 Mbps right on up to 10 Gbps or more.
International companies have special needs, in that technology does vary somewhat worldwide. An obvious example is the use of T1 lines in the United States and E1 in Europe. An ideal situation is to work with a provider that can give you the right level of bandwidth with the right interface at each of your locations. That’s what International network service companies do. You have the advantage of one vendor to deal with and one bill for all of your broadband connections and virtual private networks (VPN) that ensure security on the largely insecure Internet.
Are you in the market for more robust Internet connections to serve your business locations, either domestic USA or worldwide? If so, find out how much quality and bandwidth you can get for your budget for International Dedicated Internet Access.
