Network recovery is the process of recovering and restoring business operations on a computer network. It is similar in scope to disaster recovery to the extent that both services are tailored to prepare organizations for disasters that could disrupt, amongst others, network services. Network recovery as a service, together with an organization’s business continuity plan, ensures that network services are restored, and downtime minimized following a disaster.
It is, however, not only a disaster that warrants a network recovery solution. Disruptions can include:
- hardware failure: routers, switches, modems, gateways, or any other device can fail and affect network performance;
- cascading failure: a network consists of multiple routers, nodes, and switches; if one component fails or becomes overloaded, it can trigger a cascade of failures within the network;
- internet connection failure: internet connectivity issues can cause network connectivity problems and interrupt data transfer;
- human error: these are simply mistakes made by employees when working with network equipment; and
- network attacks (such as DDoS attacks) that specifically aim to disrupt services and forcing organizations to shut down completely.
Why do you need network recovery as a service?
First of all the purpose of a network is to allow interconnectivity within an organization as well as with the outside world. To ensure the optimal operation of your organization’s functions, all sectors should function properly. It follows that if an organization loses its data, it will come to a standstill. Similarly, when network services are disrupted, operations will also cease. This is true regardless of the industry or type of business – your business will be unable to continue with its most important tasks without internet and interconnectivity.
A network recovery plan (which forms part of network recovery as a service) is vital to business continuity planning.
With Stage2Data now also being a certified Internet Service Provider (ISP/carrier) its clients’ IP addresses will remain constant in the event of a complete network failure. It uses Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), a routing technique which directs data from one node to the next based on short path labels rather than long network addresses, thus avoiding complex lookups in a routing table and speeding traffic flows.
The local network will failover on the Stage2Data backend and the network will be recovered using exactly the same IP address as before. So, no need to change any settings. Life and business just carry on as normal.
This pain free Network recovery solution is a unique offering by Stage2Data and aims to offload more stress from IT professionals and CIOs – giving better sleep at night.
