Differences Between Consumer And Business Grade Internet Service

 

  Introduction: There is a big difference between consumer internet service and business-grade internet service. We all know that businesses tend to demand ability and performance fluffy features. One fluffy feature with internet service that tends to be about by consumer focused internet service providers is megabits per second (MBPS). Many ISP providers are pushing the limits are megabits per second and offering gig speed. But if you are a business and your priority is reliability and speed of transmission, there are a couple things that are a bit more important.

  Factors Businesses Demand To Get The Best Performance

  Bandwidth - After you've gotten reasonable bandwidth for your need next, you need to look at your ISP is connected to the internet. Consumer based internet service providers take large amounts of bandwidth and chop it up amongst large numbers of consumers. That means sometimes an individual user will have very fast service, and other times the user will experience slowness and lags. This happens because consumer-based providers serve many many many endpoints and they need to manage their networks so that they don't come crashing down when there is a spike in demand.

  Focus on Latency - Latency is a big important factor for. Savvy businesses want their latency to be as small as possible, and they want that guaranteed. For example an ISP may say that you're guaranteed 45 milliseconds maximum latency and if anything happens outside of that band range they will compensate you for it. For you that means very fast internet, because latency is the time it take for your click or entry to reach its destination. So if you have gig speed, but very poor latency, 20 megabit per second circuit is going to be faster than your gig speed circuit.

   Get the Fiber - If at all possible go for the fiber. Fiber is big factor in keeping latency to a minimum. Many companies that offer fiber are also part of very large Networks. And, that means your data will travel along optical fiber Networks more often. After the limit of the fiber network is reached the data will be handed off to non-fiber network to reach its final destination. In a well-connected business Network you could have 90% of your internet on fiber and possibly only the last 10% handed off to another type of network. This translates to speed!. In a consumer Network likely all of your traffic is runs on non-fiber networks and if necessary old fashioned telephone lines.

  Up and down speed - This is important for businesses. In the consumer world there's no way you'll get matching upload and download speed because of the number of endpoints and the way the network has to be managed. Consumer-based internet providers can't give you the same speed upload and download speed. Business class providers on the other hand will give you what's called symmetrical internet and this little feature is the difference that makes internet for business a different animal than consumer-grade service. Simply put, in order to get matching up and download speed the service provider must limit the number of endpoints on the network. And, that means consistent up and download speeds with little if any variablity in service that happens on massive consumer networks.

  Conclusion - Because businesses demand more, better, and reliable services for all the services they use, providers can guarantee quality and speed at a level that far exceeds consumer-based internet providers are the best choice for businesses. So, if you're shopping for Internet service for your business or professsional practice, try to get fiber if possible and ask if the vendorr will offer optical fiber with a latency guarantee, as well as matching up and down speed.