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The Basics Of Automated ISP Failover

While the internet and ISP providers have become much more reliable over the last decade, there is still downtime associated with any ISP. When you are in business, and your business is based on continual internet connectivity, even a few minutes down in off-peak times can be sales lost and profits not realized. Having an automated ISP failover in place can prevent these issues.

Think of an automated ISP failover as a fully automatic backup system that takes over within fractions of a second when the main ISP goes down. In fact, this happens so quickly that users don't even realize they are no longer on the primary ISP system.

Of course, not all secondary systems are this fast, but with bonding the two ISPs and having them both handling traffic at the same time it is just a matter of the system itself handling the change in routing, which can occur within milliseconds of a detected problem in the system.

What is Failover?

Another way to think of failover is to think of redundancy. When one pathway to the internet is unavailable, or one ISP is not functioning, everything automatically is routed through the working pathway, which is the failover. The process is done instantly and without the need for any manual input or change in configuration, which is really the full definition of an automated ISP failover.

The Advantages

There are three different options when it comes to automated ISP failover. One is a cold standby, where the secondary ISP is simply sitting there and not used, with all uploads and downloads for the company going through the one connection to the internet. In these situations, the switch from one to the other may not be fully automated, and there may be a second or two where internet connectivity is dropped, depending on the configuration.

The other option is hot or fully automated ISP failover. Both systems are running, and it is simply a matter of setting the routing to go to the primary ISP and, if not available, go through the secondary. This gives a smooth transition with little packet loss during the transfer process.

The third option, and one offered by top companies is a full and complete automated ISP failover option without any downtime or packet loss. This is possible through the bonding of the primary and secondary ISP. The two systems handle all the traffic, balancing across both as active ISPs at all times, then simply adjusting to handle the traffic if one goes down.

With automated ISP failover from ZeroOutages, you will experience continual internet service even if one ISP is down. Click here to learn more.