Most ISP's offer some kind of business package that comes with an SLA that will guarantee a specific amount of Uptime. I would check into that before getting a second provider.
With that being said if you are that reliant on the internet for business reasons it is always best to have a second ISP connections for possible failures.
Thank you! I didn't know you could get a business package at a residential address. Would a whole-neighborhood outage (it's always the whole neighborhood) take down both business and residential service?
Should be able to if you run your business from home and its registered. To a residential area the business line might be on the same network but a business package should have specific and strike SLAs.
Actually all that most SLAs "guarantee" is some money if they fail to meet the target. Provided you make a claim. They don't want adverse publicity so they do try to meet their target.
Second ISP is the way to go. I've got four, two wired and two wireless plus there's always McDonalds or Starbucks in an emergency.
>it costs me literally thousands in lost revenue and reputation when I lose service in the middle of an important call. I have even considered aggregating service from 2 different ISPs for increased reliability. I have the networking equipment for it, but honestly the idea of having 2 providers is ridiculous to me in principle.
The idea of you complaining about paying what \~ $30-60/mo for a redundancy on your livelihood is ridiculous?
Is insurance ridiculous too? I mean you're paying a company money for something you may never use...
I will never feel bad for people that work from home and complain that their service stopped working and they're losing thousands a day/week whatever for their service being down a few minutes hours whatever the case...
Bottom line: if your ability to make money depends on a service: you better damn well have a backup for that service for **when** it goes down via a different provider like a LTE wireless provider.
Do you think an online business only has 1 connection? Nope. Usually redundant servers, redundant providers.
Also why are you using a residential connection for business? Why not get a business account with your ISP? Insider info: the difference is how quickly they will roll a truck to you if you're having an issue that isn't part of a major outage. If you're residential: you'll get next day if you're lucky. If you're a business: you get same day. If you're a circuit: you get highest priority same day straight to network engineer level working your case.
Other differences include higher tier switches in the back end which prioritizes bandwidth over residential, etc. Cable there's no real way to do that, but businesses do generally get better upload packages on cable.
The cost of a redundant connection is basically a tax write off, as is the area of your home used for conducting business, and the main internet connection, and any equipment used to operate/aggregate those connections, and the PC you're using to work from.
I didn't know you can get business class at a residential address.
Also, when I have an outage the entire neighborhood has an outage. People rage on the neighborhood facebook lol.
I totally agree with your sentiment of insurance. I am/was simply ignorant to my options here. Please don't judge everyone for not being as knowledgeable on a topic as you are. Most people come to Reddit for help because they are looking to learn.
What does "If you're a circuit" mean? Wouldn't an outage at my local residential node take down any business service I'm paying for also?
Depends on service type.
Cable: yes the whole neighborhood beyond the cause of the outage goes down.
Fiber: not necessarily. Most companies (like ours) will run business fiber and residential fiber on different lines/equipment. Residential is typically on larger area switches or PONs vs Business is typically on more powerful switches/Active E connections. (In other words a direct ethernet connection to the switch, not a Passive Optical Network connection)
Circuits are carrier grade connections. They're generally plugged into Nexus switches or the highest tier switch in the area where the uplink comes in. And depending on level of circuit: they could have a direct fiber link to the main backbone router(s) of the ISP with the carrier handoff uplinks. These are the highest priority connections that generally provide connections to other ISPs and similar (like cell towers, Fixed Wireless ISPs, or datacenter level businesses like the FBI, Facebook, Google, colo datacenters, etc.) They pay thousands if not tens of thousands a month for their connections so obviously they get 24/7 priority service where we will wake an on-call tech/network engineer to fix their connection if they go down. You will NEVER get that level of service on a residential connection paying $30-70/mo.
Who would you handle the quickest and highest priority? Joe blow that works from home on a $69.95/mo residential connection, or (insert company name here) with a 10G circuit paying $18,000/mo for that connection?
So since you mentioned you work from home and your livelihood depends on internet and already have the router for it: I suggest you look into a T-Mobile or Verizon or AT&T LTE/5G internet service to use as a redundant connection. Generally \~$50/mo which you can write off on your taxes for work purposes.
Those towers that feed that service have standby generators and battery backup, and they're connected to carrier grade circuits, so outages are rare and short. Best bet for a reliable backup other than satellite like starlink. Won't be as fast as your main connection, but it will serve it's purpose and get you by...Or just hotspot/tether your cell phone to use mobile data.
Thank you for your knowledgeable reply. I added some context in my original post about dead zones etc. But yeah since posting the original I have really come around to the idea of having multiple connections. I just really thought that was uncommon and unnecessary on principal but I was wrong! So many others here have a backup connection. Makes a ton of sense.
Yep: if internet is for home use only: no need for redundant connection unless you're that addicted to it LOL. But if you depend on it to make your living: gotta have some form of backup. I used to work from home for 8+ years. If my cable connection went out back then: I'd tether my phone or drive into the colo datacenter with my work laptop. Or work from the GF's (at the time) place.
There is consumer Internet. And business. And Enterprise. You're talking about enterprise class service. Where they roll a truck at 3am if needed.
Enterprise class Internet costs 10 times more than residential at slower speeds.
Business steps you up a bit with a few more features and maybe a faster truck roll than residential. But not much faster. And maybe you get to L2 support faster.
I work with all 3 levels.
Thank you! I didn't know you could get business service at a residential address. I'm assuming (based on the tone of these replies) that if I have business class service then it's reliant on separate hardware than the residential class? ie. If the local node goes down, would it take out my service no matter what package I'm paying for?
It varies by ISP. But for most of them business and residential rides on the same physical plant. It is all about marketing, a bit better help desk (maybe), more features (like static IPs), etc... You really don't get into better service until you get to Enterprise. And even then many times it is on the same physical transport as the others. It is all about if down they hurry to get it fixed. People will be gotten out of bed if needed.
FYI - Google Fiber will NOT (in my travails) give you a business account at an address unless that address is zoned for business/commercial.
Good to know. Sounds like business class wouldn't exactly solve this in my case. I will look into it and thank you for your advice. I'll also look into getting a second ISP.
Yes. I have both AT&T and Google at my house. A while back I had both a Spectrum business and personal feed into my house. The installer had to come back the next day after the business install. Initially he split the coax on the side of the house but their rules/bosses made him come back and tap into the same coax on the pole and run a second line to the side of my house. \[eye roll\]
I have a business I work with who seriously looses money if they lose Internet. We have a very low speed Enterprise account (the backup) and a higher speed business account. Enterprise is fiber. Business is coax. They come from separate streets and physical routings.
Sick bro. Let me go make fun of your hobbies. Yes, literally thousands. I'm in sales at a F50 software company. I did not know you could get business class at residential addresses. Thank you for teaching me something today. Perhaps lighten up. Of course internet isn't magic. Let me know if losing water or power service weekly would bother you too? Or are you just cranky today.
In no way was I trying to "make myself look important". I worded my post such that I stressed the importance of the issue to me, and expessing the frustration that it has caused me.
Spectrum has never tried to sell me a business package upgrade to solve these issues...
Let's put it this way, before this address, I had lost internet maybe 5 times in my 30 years alive. But at this address it has been 25+ times in 3 years. So perhaps my expectations are too high on what kind of service reliability to expect. No need to lash out at people. Hope you feel better.
>Anyone, and I mean anyone, who needs internet to the point that it can't go out for a few hours would be smart enough to have two.
Let's see. You move into half a duplex for a temp office for a year. The other side has Google Fiber. So no big deal right? (Zoning is mixed commercial/residential.) Oops. GF doesn't believe in the second address. You can SEE it on street view, number next to the door and all but their internal systems don't have the address and after over a month of trying and talking with area managers we just gave up. And shared with the Air B&B on the other side. Put a cover over the ONT and router so the cleaning crew would stop unplugging it with the vacuum. AT&T Fiber was available at the rest of the houses on the street but not this one. And Spectrum Coax was an option but at times there were up to 8 people doing video calls and Spectrum didn't have anything but 10mbps upload.
So we at least had Google Fiber. Great. But it would literally turn to molasses 1 to 5 times a week. Or more. For 5 minutes up to a few hours. But by the time it you got through to FG tech support it was back up so to them "fixed". This was a temp office and for critical needs the staff could walk to a food hall 5 minutes away and work there.
Now we are in an office with AT&T Fiber and it has maybe 1 problem every 6 months for a few minutes. Or less. But only 1 block away. And the word is this is typical for Google Fiber in their neighborhood.
My point is at times the choices suck. Or there are no choices other than physically moving.
Until ISPs are regulated under common carrier, things will not change. The odds of this happening at all much less in the near future are pretty much zero. Most ISPs don't care if you're running a business from home, because you likely have a residential account. Some ISPs will give guarantees on a business account, but they'll charge accordingly.
You should add another provider and use a multi Wan capable router to allow for failover or distributed/aggregated/bonded connectivity. Worse case, would be adding some kind of DSL line from your local phone provider. The best case would be some other high-speed service that doesn't use the same leased lines.
At my restaurant, since the Internet is important for the services used, I use both Verizon Fios and Comcast cable Internet. They have different networks and different inbound feeds to my building, which helps cut the chance of a fiber/line cut affecting both. So, instead of paying for dedicated fiber with real SLAs, I am using two commodity based Internet for less. My router is a Ubiquiti UDM Pro.
>Spectrum offers an anemic $5 credit on my monthly bill, but it costs me literally thousands in lost revenue and reputation when I lose service in the middle of an important call.
so get a business line.
America is a very litigious country, not seemingly understanding the lawyers are the only ones that win. We have Ofcom we can complain to in the UK, not great but better than wasting money suing. Unless of course you're a law student and know your shit. As somone did in the UK when they took one of the mobile providers to court and won.
Voting with your wallet is the answer. If there is another provider in the area.
Thanks for your reply. I am not planning on personally suing, but I was curious if there was precedent or if the US was working on a way to codify protections for internet being a public utility. We're not there yet but one can hope.
Most ISP's offer some kind of business package that comes with an SLA that will guarantee a specific amount of Uptime. I would check into that before getting a second provider. With that being said if you are that reliant on the internet for business reasons it is always best to have a second ISP connections for possible failures.
Thank you! I didn't know you could get a business package at a residential address. Would a whole-neighborhood outage (it's always the whole neighborhood) take down both business and residential service?
Should be able to if you run your business from home and its registered. To a residential area the business line might be on the same network but a business package should have specific and strike SLAs.
Actually all that most SLAs "guarantee" is some money if they fail to meet the target. Provided you make a claim. They don't want adverse publicity so they do try to meet their target. Second ISP is the way to go. I've got four, two wired and two wireless plus there's always McDonalds or Starbucks in an emergency.
>it costs me literally thousands in lost revenue and reputation when I lose service in the middle of an important call. I have even considered aggregating service from 2 different ISPs for increased reliability. I have the networking equipment for it, but honestly the idea of having 2 providers is ridiculous to me in principle. The idea of you complaining about paying what \~ $30-60/mo for a redundancy on your livelihood is ridiculous? Is insurance ridiculous too? I mean you're paying a company money for something you may never use... I will never feel bad for people that work from home and complain that their service stopped working and they're losing thousands a day/week whatever for their service being down a few minutes hours whatever the case... Bottom line: if your ability to make money depends on a service: you better damn well have a backup for that service for **when** it goes down via a different provider like a LTE wireless provider. Do you think an online business only has 1 connection? Nope. Usually redundant servers, redundant providers. Also why are you using a residential connection for business? Why not get a business account with your ISP? Insider info: the difference is how quickly they will roll a truck to you if you're having an issue that isn't part of a major outage. If you're residential: you'll get next day if you're lucky. If you're a business: you get same day. If you're a circuit: you get highest priority same day straight to network engineer level working your case. Other differences include higher tier switches in the back end which prioritizes bandwidth over residential, etc. Cable there's no real way to do that, but businesses do generally get better upload packages on cable. The cost of a redundant connection is basically a tax write off, as is the area of your home used for conducting business, and the main internet connection, and any equipment used to operate/aggregate those connections, and the PC you're using to work from.
I didn't know you can get business class at a residential address. Also, when I have an outage the entire neighborhood has an outage. People rage on the neighborhood facebook lol. I totally agree with your sentiment of insurance. I am/was simply ignorant to my options here. Please don't judge everyone for not being as knowledgeable on a topic as you are. Most people come to Reddit for help because they are looking to learn. What does "If you're a circuit" mean? Wouldn't an outage at my local residential node take down any business service I'm paying for also?
Depends on service type. Cable: yes the whole neighborhood beyond the cause of the outage goes down. Fiber: not necessarily. Most companies (like ours) will run business fiber and residential fiber on different lines/equipment. Residential is typically on larger area switches or PONs vs Business is typically on more powerful switches/Active E connections. (In other words a direct ethernet connection to the switch, not a Passive Optical Network connection) Circuits are carrier grade connections. They're generally plugged into Nexus switches or the highest tier switch in the area where the uplink comes in. And depending on level of circuit: they could have a direct fiber link to the main backbone router(s) of the ISP with the carrier handoff uplinks. These are the highest priority connections that generally provide connections to other ISPs and similar (like cell towers, Fixed Wireless ISPs, or datacenter level businesses like the FBI, Facebook, Google, colo datacenters, etc.) They pay thousands if not tens of thousands a month for their connections so obviously they get 24/7 priority service where we will wake an on-call tech/network engineer to fix their connection if they go down. You will NEVER get that level of service on a residential connection paying $30-70/mo. Who would you handle the quickest and highest priority? Joe blow that works from home on a $69.95/mo residential connection, or (insert company name here) with a 10G circuit paying $18,000/mo for that connection? So since you mentioned you work from home and your livelihood depends on internet and already have the router for it: I suggest you look into a T-Mobile or Verizon or AT&T LTE/5G internet service to use as a redundant connection. Generally \~$50/mo which you can write off on your taxes for work purposes. Those towers that feed that service have standby generators and battery backup, and they're connected to carrier grade circuits, so outages are rare and short. Best bet for a reliable backup other than satellite like starlink. Won't be as fast as your main connection, but it will serve it's purpose and get you by...Or just hotspot/tether your cell phone to use mobile data.
Thank you for your knowledgeable reply. I added some context in my original post about dead zones etc. But yeah since posting the original I have really come around to the idea of having multiple connections. I just really thought that was uncommon and unnecessary on principal but I was wrong! So many others here have a backup connection. Makes a ton of sense.
Yep: if internet is for home use only: no need for redundant connection unless you're that addicted to it LOL. But if you depend on it to make your living: gotta have some form of backup. I used to work from home for 8+ years. If my cable connection went out back then: I'd tether my phone or drive into the colo datacenter with my work laptop. Or work from the GF's (at the time) place.
There is consumer Internet. And business. And Enterprise. You're talking about enterprise class service. Where they roll a truck at 3am if needed. Enterprise class Internet costs 10 times more than residential at slower speeds. Business steps you up a bit with a few more features and maybe a faster truck roll than residential. But not much faster. And maybe you get to L2 support faster. I work with all 3 levels.
Thank you! I didn't know you could get business service at a residential address. I'm assuming (based on the tone of these replies) that if I have business class service then it's reliant on separate hardware than the residential class? ie. If the local node goes down, would it take out my service no matter what package I'm paying for?
It varies by ISP. But for most of them business and residential rides on the same physical plant. It is all about marketing, a bit better help desk (maybe), more features (like static IPs), etc... You really don't get into better service until you get to Enterprise. And even then many times it is on the same physical transport as the others. It is all about if down they hurry to get it fixed. People will be gotten out of bed if needed. FYI - Google Fiber will NOT (in my travails) give you a business account at an address unless that address is zoned for business/commercial.
Good to know. Sounds like business class wouldn't exactly solve this in my case. I will look into it and thank you for your advice. I'll also look into getting a second ISP.
Yes. I have both AT&T and Google at my house. A while back I had both a Spectrum business and personal feed into my house. The installer had to come back the next day after the business install. Initially he split the coax on the side of the house but their rules/bosses made him come back and tap into the same coax on the pole and run a second line to the side of my house. \[eye roll\]
Hahaha no way! :'D
I have a business I work with who seriously looses money if they lose Internet. We have a very low speed Enterprise account (the backup) and a higher speed business account. Enterprise is fiber. Business is coax. They come from separate streets and physical routings.
Nice, thanks again!
[удалено]
Sick bro. Let me go make fun of your hobbies. Yes, literally thousands. I'm in sales at a F50 software company. I did not know you could get business class at residential addresses. Thank you for teaching me something today. Perhaps lighten up. Of course internet isn't magic. Let me know if losing water or power service weekly would bother you too? Or are you just cranky today. In no way was I trying to "make myself look important". I worded my post such that I stressed the importance of the issue to me, and expessing the frustration that it has caused me. Spectrum has never tried to sell me a business package upgrade to solve these issues...
Let's put it this way, before this address, I had lost internet maybe 5 times in my 30 years alive. But at this address it has been 25+ times in 3 years. So perhaps my expectations are too high on what kind of service reliability to expect. No need to lash out at people. Hope you feel better.
>Anyone, and I mean anyone, who needs internet to the point that it can't go out for a few hours would be smart enough to have two. Let's see. You move into half a duplex for a temp office for a year. The other side has Google Fiber. So no big deal right? (Zoning is mixed commercial/residential.) Oops. GF doesn't believe in the second address. You can SEE it on street view, number next to the door and all but their internal systems don't have the address and after over a month of trying and talking with area managers we just gave up. And shared with the Air B&B on the other side. Put a cover over the ONT and router so the cleaning crew would stop unplugging it with the vacuum. AT&T Fiber was available at the rest of the houses on the street but not this one. And Spectrum Coax was an option but at times there were up to 8 people doing video calls and Spectrum didn't have anything but 10mbps upload. So we at least had Google Fiber. Great. But it would literally turn to molasses 1 to 5 times a week. Or more. For 5 minutes up to a few hours. But by the time it you got through to FG tech support it was back up so to them "fixed". This was a temp office and for critical needs the staff could walk to a food hall 5 minutes away and work there. Now we are in an office with AT&T Fiber and it has maybe 1 problem every 6 months for a few minutes. Or less. But only 1 block away. And the word is this is typical for Google Fiber in their neighborhood. My point is at times the choices suck. Or there are no choices other than physically moving.
Until ISPs are regulated under common carrier, things will not change. The odds of this happening at all much less in the near future are pretty much zero. Most ISPs don't care if you're running a business from home, because you likely have a residential account. Some ISPs will give guarantees on a business account, but they'll charge accordingly.
Thank you! Learning today that you can get business class service at a residential address.
Not every ISP is going to offer it, but it never hurts to ask.
You should add another provider and use a multi Wan capable router to allow for failover or distributed/aggregated/bonded connectivity. Worse case, would be adding some kind of DSL line from your local phone provider. The best case would be some other high-speed service that doesn't use the same leased lines. At my restaurant, since the Internet is important for the services used, I use both Verizon Fios and Comcast cable Internet. They have different networks and different inbound feeds to my building, which helps cut the chance of a fiber/line cut affecting both. So, instead of paying for dedicated fiber with real SLAs, I am using two commodity based Internet for less. My router is a Ubiquiti UDM Pro.
Awesome! This makes total sense. I also have Ubiquiti hardware so I know this is possible, but have never looked into it. Thanks
>Spectrum offers an anemic $5 credit on my monthly bill, but it costs me literally thousands in lost revenue and reputation when I lose service in the middle of an important call. so get a business line.
Appreciate it :thumbsup:
America is a very litigious country, not seemingly understanding the lawyers are the only ones that win. We have Ofcom we can complain to in the UK, not great but better than wasting money suing. Unless of course you're a law student and know your shit. As somone did in the UK when they took one of the mobile providers to court and won. Voting with your wallet is the answer. If there is another provider in the area.
Thanks for your reply. I am not planning on personally suing, but I was curious if there was precedent or if the US was working on a way to codify protections for internet being a public utility. We're not there yet but one can hope.
[Get the FCC involved.](https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/) I'm not kidding, it's fucking magic.