Every sales partner partner knows that diversity is one of the ways companies keep their network from going down – a critical component of any good business continuity strategy.
The problem is that while a customer may only care about the fact that their network is as resilient as possible, there are multiple ways to achieve diversity – all of which have an impact on network design, cost and complexity.
Depending on what point of failure a customer wishes to mitigate, they can deploy any of six unique types of network diversity.
First we have last-mile diversity which ensures the local loops of two circuits delivered to a common location are being routed over two distinct sets of network facilities. This prevents against downtime due to an outage on the network of one of the carriers.
Second, carrier diversity. This simply means a customer buys connections from multiple providers.
Third, entrance diversity is when circuits are delivered through different parts of the building’s physical infrastructure.
Fourth, we have IP diversity. In this instance, a customer site would receive public IP addresses from blocks belonging to different providers. This would give a customer a second routing option if internet service was to go down on a circuit.
Next, POP diversity is when circuits originate from separate points of presence, enabling traffic to be routed through a secondary POP should the primary go down.
Finally, route diversity ensures that a customer’s traffic takes two separate paths from its origination to its destination. This term is most often used in reference to private line or WAVE services.
As you can see, customers have many options when it comes to network diversity. Understanding them can help you find the right one for their business. Because of the relationship Nitel has with over 1,100 different transport vendors, we have deep knowledge of and access to what’s available in the marketplace.
If your customers are looking for a solid business continuity plan, make sure to give your Nitel channel manager a call and let’s talk through their requirements. And, if you’d like to learn more about network diversity, check out our blog post: 6 Methods for Achieving a Diverse Network.
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