When you’re selecting a transit provider for your data center environment, keep in mind that you’re picking who brings customers to your doorstep, who controls a portion of your user experience, and of course, who controls a huge part of your uptime.
There are many things to consider when picking a transit provider. I’ll outline a few:
#1 Enough network capacity to handle peak loads and DoS attacks
One of the first things you’ll want to know about is the capacity of the network. It not only needs enough capacity to deal with your normal traffic, it needs enough capacity to deal with peak loads during things like product launches or promotions. Of course, there’s the capacity needed to deal with traffic you don’t want, too, like DoS attacks. It’s important to ask questions and make sure they’re able to provide the service you need.
#2 Built to withstand single points of failure and scheduled maintenance
Another important factor is the reliability and redundancy of the network. Is the network designed to be fault-tolerant?
If portions of the network represent single points of failure, then each one is a potential liability for your business.
Will scheduled maintenance cause downtime? You may not want to go down according to someone else’s schedule.
#3 Ability to route around problems
Find out how much control your potential transit provider has over their routing policies.
Problems are bound to come up delivering traffic to your customers. It’s helpful to find a provider that can route around outages and bottlenecks.
#4 A network support team that knows what they’re doing
If you call your provider for support, are you able to talk to someone who can help you, or do they pass you off into a phone tree?
Do they let you talk to the person who can actually fix the problem? If not, how long does it take to reach that person?
At SCTG, we’ve got these bases covered. We’re always willing to talk through any of these scenarios with you and your team. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about our network connectivity services.
