You are likely to hear the words “diversity” and “redundancy” when researching network connectivity for your business, but what is the difference between diversity vs redundancy?
Consider diversity and redundancy as an integral part of any business continuity plan to keep your business online even if your primary connection goes down, or you experience a hardware failure.
Redundancy offers a solid backup plan so that your business can continue operating should a hardware or network failure occur. Diversity is the ideal solution for businesses looking for increased protection.
Redundancy means that your business has multiple hardware and/or networks capable of connecting to the web or your other business locations. For example, if an outage disrupts your WiFi service from your primary provider, employees can get back online easily via a backup network connection. Redundant service decreases the chances of your company experiencing a prolonged outage.
However, even with a completely redundant service, your company can still suffer downtime if both ways to connect share an entry point into your building or share a path along the street. If the telecommunications cables that share the entry point or path are damaged or destroyed, your service will go down — even with redundancy.
Diversity provides an increased level of protection for your business. A diverse connection involves two or more network connections physically entering your facilities through completely different entry points and/or traversing different paths on your telecommunications providers’ network.
With a diverse network connection, different entry points and different paths allow for reducing a single point of failure resulting in a complete loss of connectivity.
No business wants to experience an outage. But, when potential downtime is not just an inconvenience to your operations — and instead, conceivably catastrophic — it is time to consider a diverse and redundant design solution.
To learn more about diversity vs redundancy, watch our video that explores how a true diverse fiber network connection is ideal for your business.