What is Network Redundancy and its Benefits?

Imagine having a highly reliable business with network availability and connectivity with the Internet and its various locations. Then suddenly, unplanned network outages occur that will surely affect the revenue of that business in a bad way. Network redundancy addresses that kind of curveball wherein the network is designed to react and restore network services after serious downtime quickly.

Network redundancy provides a network strategy and multiple fallback plans in case a network failure occurs to keep services up and valuable data flowing through the network. Redundant networks are synonymous with a reliable network that will greatly benefit the customers.

Having network redundancy implemented in the network also means that various network devices and technologies are in place, which means having redundancy also means having a complex network.

The more complex the network design, the harder it is to understand, and it also increases the risk of human errors and bugs in the software that may cause new modes of failure. That is why it is very important to plan, design, and implement network redundancy because once it is done, the benefits outweigh the risks.

 

Types of Network Redundancy

Designing a redundant network requires a deep understanding of how to address various types of challenges that the task requires. Below are several network infrastructure design considerations that are taken into account to establish network redundancy systems that act as a failsafe to ensure the continuity of network services:

 

Pathway Redundancy

This redundancy emphasizes several alternate network paths for the information within the network. If a link is down, there is an alternative way of reaching the destination through established alternate routes, which is done by the network devices, ensuring network availability.

 

Power Redundancy

Most network devices are dependent on electric power for them to function. That is why having a backup power source in the location of your network devices may it be a simple equipment room or a high-end data center, is a must. This ensures that the worst-case scenario of a power outage can be addressed by power backup systems, like having a generator on-site or a UPS, to ensure network service continuity.

 

Geographic Redundancy

This redundancy ensures that if the main data center encounters a severe outage like a city-wide blackout that lasts longer than the power backup systems can provide an alternate data center in a different location from the affected one can take over to ensure business continuity.

 

Data Redundancy

Data redundancy is usually present together with at least one of the redundancy types above because the data is considered one of the most important assets of a business or organization. That is why having backup data on a separate backup server or cloud is needed to ensure that data is readily available despite any untoward downtime.

 

Benefits of Network Redundancy

Putting a network contingency in place enables the business to prevent revenue loss caused by unplanned outages. Do note that even if the downtimes are unplanned, they can be mitigated with proactive solutions. Here are several benefits of having extensive backup systems in your entire network:

 

Uptime

24/7 network availability is an obvious advantage of implementing redundant networks. This is important to customers who rely upon 24-hour services such as hospitals and banks.

 

Security

IT security generally relies on redundancy to be qualified as effective. Redundant networks allow us to have state-of-the-art security measures and the backing of successful compliance audits. With redundant networks, downtime doesn’t leave your information vulnerable as team members work to isolate and resolve security concerns.

 

Latency

Being able to have multiple paths to access the same location means that it will be less likely that you will experience slow connections.

 

Business Continuity

The most important benefit of them all is keeping the business running and serving its customers. No matter what catastrophe occurs, the network should have a disaster recovery and be able to serve its customers, whether it be a major problem or a simple inconvenience.


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