Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is an enterprise connectivity approach that combines an often-complicated mix of business connections to remote sites as a single virtual network.
Enterprise grade internet is a premium offering, typically provided over dedicated fibre access and resulting in the highest throughput, maximum speed and availability guarantees.
Business internet connections, by contrast, might be provided over the more widely available and cost-effective local consumer networks. Such services might be limited to similar speeds as available in the consumer markets – often being asymmetric. However, they may offer higher availability or support packages than a typical residential service. Given the prevalence of asymmetric speeds amongst business internet, they may be less ideal for sharing/serving content requiring higher availabilities and high upload bandwidth.
More typically, Enterprise Internet connections might be delivered to a core location such as the company’s data centre or head office, whereas business internet connections service more remote sites. The trend towards SD-WAN and disaggregated models has reinvigorated the demand for business internet connections at remote sites to provide more direct connectivity to public clouds.
Scalable capacity
95th percentile billing is another feature that allows customers to pay a fixed amount for access to an agreed bandwidth with the option to burst beyond the allowance if the network has the capacity available and the customer requires it. Excess usage charges are paid typically in $/Mb/s for the time the service was bursting beyond the fixed threshold.
Redundancy
BGP Dynamic routing is very commonly available allowing continuity of service by advertising your public addresses across multiple links for redundancy.
Enterprise Internet is often a more ‘guaranteed’ offering for applications requiring higher throughputs and availability, particularly in the scenarios where overlays such as SD-WAN are not otherwise a good fit or a requirement.
Speeds are typically not limited by any physical aspects in the last mile such as distance from exchanges or number of subscribers in proximity, but instead by the capability of the service providers’ core network. This means providers consistently offer symmetrical 10Gbps speeds (same upload speed as download speeds), with some service providers capable of 100Gbps Enterprise Internet services.
As well as Premium SLAs and Higher upload speeds, Enterprise Internet connections often come paired with additional value add features such as DDoS protection to reduce the impact and business risks of denial-of-service attacks by ‘scrubbing’ or ‘black-holing’ non-genuine requests to an enterprise’s public facing servers.
You’re a small business or an employee working from home.
Small businesses, such as hairdressers, cafes or mechanics, are better suited to business grade internet connections to carry out day to day operations. Employees working from their homes can perform tasks easily through residential internet services. Enterprise grade internet is primarily for companies that need high-capacity bandwidth, like data centres, head offices or large firms or major city offices.
Pricing is typically monthly in advance with any allowance for burst captured as a per Mbps rate in arrears.
With DDoS protection, the capability to scrub or black hole attack traffic varies substantially between suppliers. Ensure you understand the specific traffic volumes the supplier can cater for and the locations the traffic can be managed. Capability to clean traffic closer to the expected traffic source is preferred and prevents your internet providers’ core links becoming overwhelmed before the traffic reaches the cleaning mechanism.
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