Network failover solutions reduce network downtime and keep mission-critical applications online when it matters most
Regardless of industry or location, every business needs to strategically implement network failover solutions. When connectivity goes down, point-of-sale (POS) services, business operations, profits, and even customer satisfaction suffer.
In the interest of business continuity solutions for your network, here are seven key factors to consider regarding failover.
#1: Overlay failover
Organizations that may not have the resources to overhaul their business continuity infrastructure can instead implement overlay failover with their existing infrastructure as a simple, cost-effective solution. Cradlepoint adapters convert cellular broadband to Ethernet by providing the existing wireline router with a second “wired” WAN connection.
Overlay failover increases reliability without relying on last-mile connectivity via the same trench. It’s easy to set up as well — IT staff can simply plug in the router and configure remotely with NetCloud Manager (NCM), the network management within Cradlepoint NetCloud Service.
#2: Redundancy
Multiple parts of a network can fail, so it’s important to deploy different types of redundancies in your business continuity solution. If your wired WAN connection goes down, you can fail over to LTE or 5G. If your router goes offline, you can take advantage of a second, parallel router using Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP).
VRRP, a layer 3 protocol, empowers businesses to take failover to a higher level by allowing Internet failover and router failover simultaneously. If the primary router fails, a backup hardware solution can take over as the primary router. The entire network automatically fails over to the Cradlepoint router — with the LAN and WAN uninterrupted.
#3: Out-of-Band Management (OOBM)
OOBM is another important element of network failover. Traditionally, a truck roll requiring expensive equipment and labor is needed if something goes wrong with a primary router’s configuration. Through OOBM with NCM, IT staff can use wireless connectivity to remotely access the router and all LAN-connected devices sitting behind a Cradlepoint adapter. It’s like having an engineer sitting at a laptop plugged into the console port of the primary router from anywhere in the world.
These robust OOBM services are available through NCM without the primary Internet connection, inbound SSH, or a static IP address.
#4: Bandwidth
Many businesses are simultaneously exchanging multiple types of data, such as sales information, voice and video data, and inventory, often at peak times. Wireless broadband failover is ideal if your primary WAN connection goes down, but why not utilize the extra bandwidth all the time?
LTE and 5G connectivity are incredibly powerful because they support high bandwidth, which your business can benefit from by utilizing failover for load balancing. Critical traffic can be sent across cellular broadband while public traffic can be routed through a land-based connection. In the case of an outage, public Wi-Fi can simply be shut off to preserve critical services, thereby ensuring failover when you need it while expanding bandwidth when you don’t.
#5: Multi-WAN management
At first glance, 99.5% uptime sounds impressive — until you realize that the missing 0.5% equates to four hours of downtime each month. If your business has multiple locations, that network downtime can become very expensive very quickly.
A multi-WAN solution can boost that uptime to “four-nines” uptime, or a 99.99% solution. With multi-WAN failover and several failure detection and decision algorithms, Cradlepoint provides flexible and robust failover and failback. Cradlepoint offers best-in-class mechanisms that allow you to pick which WAN source to use and can handle advanced multi-WAN management.
#6: Wireless-to-wireless failover
In vehicles, where wired lines aren’t an option, mobile broadband is the primary connection, but that doesn’t mean failover isn’t available. Cradlepoint's in-vehicle routers support multiple cellular connections as well as WiFi-as-WAN. Wi-Fi offloading of video DVRs via station Wi-Fi for busses or police is common so as not use the mobile broadband connection while in the field. IT managers can select Wi-Fi to automatically attach and trigger video offloading whenever available and LTE or 5G to activate while on the road.
IT teams that deploy Cradlepoint in-vehicle routers featuring multiple modems can achieve true wireless-to-wireless failover, going back and forth as needed between two cellular connections and Wi-Fi.
#7: Future-proofing
Ensuring that what you buy today is adaptable to what is released tomorrow can be an extremely important — and financially responsible — element of your network failover solution, and Cradlepoint’s routers and adapters offer a turnkey networking solution for best-in-class cellular connectivity.