Almost all businesses rely on highly functioning IT, specifically networking, for successful and productive operations. 
As an IT manager, your job is to ensure everything is running seamlessly. However, an outage or hardware failure can quickly impede or even stop productivity, which results in lost revenue.
The most effective way to avoid bringing your company’s operations to a standstill is to have the proper redundancy measures in place before something goes awry.
In technology, redundancy refers to providing duplicate, backup equipment to take over in a situation where something fails.
When you work with The KR Group — or any IT consultant — we’ll stress the importance of redundancy and help you integrate it into your IT environment.
Here are a few things we suggest you consider when creating a redundant network:
- The importance of networking redundancy
- Where you need redundancy in your network
- Implementing network redundancy
- Prioritizing network redundancy
By considering redundancy from all of these perspectives, you’ll have a better grasp of how to create a robust, highly available network that will keep your business running.
The Importance of Networking Redundancy
Any equipment that represents a single point of failure for IT infrastructure has the potential to halt part or all of a company’s production.
Increasingly, networking and related components have become a single point of failure for businesses that rely on the internet for operations.
When thinking about how vital networking redundancy is to your business, ask yourself what would happen if your users or systems no longer had access to the internet.
The systems that are responsible for almost every company’s production increasingly rely on the network infrastructure to remain operational.
Where You Need Redundancy Within Your Network
In a nutshell, the implications of a single point of failure mean you should consider redundancy for all networking components.
However, realistically, you’ll want to assess which aspects of your network are so critical that a single point of failure is unacceptable and detrimental to your business’s operations.
If you break down your network, this looks like the following:
1. Circuits
If you have any services hosted in the cloud, redundant internet connections are a baseline requirement. At some point, one of your Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have an outage, and you’ll still want a way to access the applications you have in the cloud.
Additionally, your business’s phones rely on internet circuits even if they’re not hosted in the cloud.
For example, suppose your telecommunications provider can’t forward individual numbers to users’ cell phones during an outage. If you lose your phone circuits, your customers and vendors can no longer contact you via a phone call.
If your phone system is hosted in the cloud, you’re back to the first point about the baseline requirement of redundancy for internet connectivity.
2. Routers
A router tells hosts on a network, such as servers, desktops, laptops, printers, etc., how to reach other networks.
In many networks, the core switch provides this logical brainpower. This means you’ll want to consider redundancy for this component.
Why?
Suppose the core of your network goes down, or a dedicated router providing connectivity to a branch location is offline. How badly is production impacted?
It doesn’t help to have all your users on the network if they can’t reach the servers or the internet because the core routing functions are broken.
3. Firewalls
A firewall provides a secure boundary between networks, most commonly between a business’s internal network and the internet. In simpler terms, it helps prevent attackers from gaining access to your entire network.
Unless your business does not rely on internet access to function, a firewall is vital to protect your network from an attack.
Like internet circuits, multiple firewalls provide redundancy for users and systems within the business and users working from home or outside the office.
4. Access points 
Unless you’re in a tiny office, you’ll almost always have at least two wireless access points for users to connect to. However, multiple devices don’t automatically guarantee wireless redundancy throughout your building.
Good wireless design involves a certain amount of coverage overlap between access points. You’ll most often consider this from a roaming standpoint since you want to avoid any areas with a weak signal or gaps in the signal.
Creating proper overlap not only solves the roaming and coverage issues. It also solves the redundancy issue almost completely, as a given client should connect to two or even three access points from anywhere in the building.
Implementing Network Redundancy
Now that you understand why it’s crucial to incorporate redundancy, let’s talk about how you do it.
With circuits, you’ll want to have two different ISPs providing internet coverage. How you divvy up your internet connection will be based on your budget and specific connection needs.
Most enterprise-grade firewalls can handle two internet circuits, but an IT consultant will point you in the right direction if you have questions.
Additionally, you’ll want to choose firewalls, routers, and core switches that can provide both physical and logical redundancy and set them up for the appropriate high availability.
When it comes to your wireless network, you’ll want to take the design and installation of your access points into consideration to provide the proper density and overlap.
Prioritizing Network Redundancy
While each area of your network is important to implement redundancy, you may need to spread the project out over time.
Where should you start?
In general, signing up for a redundant internet circuit is an excellent first step.
This way, if you have an internet outage, your secondary circuit from another ISP will continue to provide a network connection for your organization.
From there, you’ll want to focus on the core elements of your network and then move onto the less critical components. For these parts of your network, you can rely on warm (you can only tolerate a brief outage) or cold (you can wait for human intervention) redundancy.
However, you’ll want active redundancy (no interruption in service) for your internet circuit.
For example, you may have dual internet circuits, dual firewalls, and a spare switch or two on a shelf to cover the network core and any other IT closet while you wait for replacement gear. This puts you well ahead of a business that has no enterprise-grade redundant equipment.
Redundancy in Your Network
If an outage or failure would spell disaster for your business, redundancy is essential.
When it comes to your network, having redundancy with your internet circuits, firewalls, routers, core switches, and access points will keep your users connected to the internet and your business operational.
When you look at all the areas you need to make redundant, prioritize those at the core of your network and have no current workarounds.
Creating a redundant network can seem like a tedious task, but you don’t have to do it alone.
An IT consultant can assess each functional area of your network, allowing them to make specific, individualized recommendations for your network.
Or, you can show the consultant how your business operates, relies on the network, and could be impacted by an outage. From there, you can have us guide you on what the right steps toward redundancy are right for your business as a whole.
With either process, once you and the IT consultant have identified a plan for implementing redundancy, you can use them as a resource for implementation, testing, and validation.
For more information on the process of implementing redundancy or any infrastructure services project, download our free timeline.
