Improve your internet speed and reliability by connecting directly to the cloud
31 May 2024, by Slade Baylis
As many learned during the Optus outage that occurred back in November last year, the reliability of internet connections can have a profound impact on the functioning of any organisation. As we reported at the time1, crucial services like public transport, public health systems, and even government services were offline when it occurred. That’s why it’s important to consider the reliability of your internet when evaluating what’s best for connecting to it.
As NBN offerings have become increasingly available Australia-wide, many have taken them up as their primary connection to the internet. Whilst for residential use this is more than adequate, for businesses there are risks that many aren’t aware of. Unfortunately, in most cases, they are only discovered after they’ve been drawn in by NBN’s lower cost. Examples of these issues include traffic congestion causing slowdowns during peak times, slow upload speeds affecting off-site backups, and reliability issues which are unable to be resolved due to being outside the scope of NBN’s included service level agreement (SLAs).
That’s why this month we’ll be talking about “Point-to-Point” connections. We’ll explain what they are, how they compare to business NBN connections, as well as discuss some of the other advantages that you can gain by extending your network into the cloud.
What is a Point-to-Point connection?
A Point-to-Point (PTP) connection is a “layer 2” communication link between two geographically separate locations. Much the same as how networks are extended throughout different parts of a building via running ethernet cables from one location to another, PTP connections extend networks from building-to-building via fibre network infrastructure laid between the two locations.
As a brief aside, the term “layer 2” refers to the second layer of the seven-layer OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model of computer networking. It specifically refers to the protocol layer that’s responsible for transferring data node-to-node across a network and detecting errors that occur in the physical layer (layer 1).
One common approach to connecting two locations via a PTP link is to use "dark fibre". Dark fibre is the term is used for fibre PTP connections that are delivered using dedicated physical fibre lines, which is only used to connect the two locations and nothing else. In other instances, the existing fibre and networks from telecommunication provider like Telstra and Optus are used.
In approaches where existing fibre and networks are used, Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) and pseudowire technology enable the creation of virtual private links between different locations, without the hundreds of thousands of dollars that can sometimes be required to lay dedicated fibre. LAN (Local Area Network) is the term for a collection of devices connected together over a network in a single physical location, such as at an office, warehouse, or home.
With these connections, the two locations can be configured so that the same private networks span the two sites. This allows for networks to be much simpler and easy to manage, as well as helps avoid security and privacy risks that can arise from trying to connect two sites over technologies that connect over the open internet, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). A VPN is a method of simulating a LAN over the open internet, allowing devices to communicate over a network as if they were at the same physical location.
Whilst VPNs utilise encryption to secure data in transit, PTP links allow you to rest assured that communication between your two sites is entirely private.
How do Business NBN connections compare?
As we’ve mentioned above, with the increased deployment of the NBN around Australia, many people have been able to access cheap and fast internet, some for the very first time. From a business perspective though, there are things to be aware of with NBN connections when looking to rely on them for your internet connectivity.
The first and most important thing to know, is that NBN services are likely to be more prone to fluctuate on speed and to even have outages periodically. The reason for this is that these connections run on the same network and infrastructure as everyone else on the network, which means that bandwidth is shared. What this can result in is slowdowns to your connections due ‘noisy neighbours’ - which is a term used to describe interruption or drops in quality of your service due to other users of that same service.
For Residential NBN plans specifically, these plans don’t have the types of SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that we recommend all businesses should have. It's for this reason we don't recommend anyone look to use Residential NBN connections for their business. However, if you're running a really small business and you only need to use it for mail and the occasional internet use, then a Residential NBN plan could work if you don't mind the occasional outage and the slow speeds. When compared with Business NBN plans, there are fewer guarantees around the quality of the service in terms of uptime and speed, meaning that you'll need to meet minimum outage lengths or speed variations before they'll begin to look into the issues you're having with connection.
To be able to tell what type of plan you are on, a useful quick rule of thumb is that anything under $100 per month is usually a non-business connection.
Another aspect that can be an issue is the asymmetrical nature of the connection. With Residential and Business NBN connections – unlike PTP connections – the speeds with which you can download files is quicker than you can upload them. For example, on a standard 100 Mbit connection, the corresponding upload speed is 20 Mbits. Even on faster plans, like the Ultra-Fast NBN 1000/50 plan, the “typical evening speeds” that can be expected are 600 Mbps download and only 42 Mbps upload.
For day-to-day internet use, this can be largely suitable. However, with more companies looking to add off-site backups for their infrastructure, these sorts of upload limits can severely limit or in some cases even rule out cloud-based offsite backups. With such a small upload speed, transporting a daily backup of your systems to an offsite location is impossible in a lot of cases, let alone backup strategies that take backups more frequently.
Extending your network into the cloud with Point-to-Point networks
Here at Micron21, we have a lot of customers who choose to establish Point-to-Point networks from their premises to ours for their internet connectivity. For these customers, not only do they get to take advantage of our global network and the speed and reliability of PTP connections, but they also get to use these fibre links to extend their networks into the cloud.
As mentioned previously, PTP links connect two locations together on a networking level, making a single private network span multiple locations. By taking the approach of these customers, they are able to extend their network to the systems that they have in our data centre. What this means is that they are able to move their systems from their premises into the cloud, whilst keeping the network just as secure as before. Not only that, but this direct connection also allows for backups of on-premise hosted systems to be taken over this dedicated connection, which is much faster and more secure than it would be over the open internet.
These PTP connections can either be set up over VPLS or can be deployed as “dark fibre”, which is dedicated fibre between the two locations. Dark fibre has some added benefits over VPLS PTP connections, as the connection doesn’t rely on any other networking infrastructure along its path - it’s a pure fibre service. This means that you have complete control over the service from beginning to end. As always, there are advantages and disadvantages to weigh up, and the drawback to this dark fibre approach is that the cost is higher than its virtual counterpart.
Point-to-Point or NBN – Which should you choose?
As with most things, which option is better for you will depend on your requirements. If the lowest price is your main objective, in a lot of cases a cheaper NBN offering can be your best option, though with a few notable exceptions, such as our own BBP Fibre plans.
Though for fast, reliable, and symmetrical connections that enable you to adopt cloud-based infrastructure and backups, the many different types of Point-to-Point connections are the clear winner.
Have any questions about Point-to-Point connections?
If you have any questions about how Point-to-Point connections work, or would like to know what would be involved in setting one up, let us know! We can help answer any questions you have and provide pricing for getting your premises connected.
You can contact us via phone on 1300 769 972 (Option #1) or alternatively reach out to us via email at sales@micron21.com
Source
1, Micron21, “The recent Optus outage – what happened, how it was fixed, and how to protect yourself in the future”, <https://www.micron21.com/blog/the-recent-optus-network-outage-what-happened-how-it-was-resolved-and-how-to-protect-yourself-in>
