“We have redundant internet” often means two circuits from the same carrier riding the same fiber path. Real connectivity diversity is a deliberate architecture, and it draws on several distinct building blocks.
The building blocks
- Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) — symmetric, SLA-backed bandwidth for predictable performance
- SD-WAN — intelligent path selection across multiple transports
- Carrier diversity — genuinely separate providers and fiber routes
- Dark fiber — dedicated strands for control, capacity, and low latency
- Cloud connectivity — direct on-ramps to major cloud platforms
Designing for resilience
The goal is to remove single points of failure — not just at the circuit level, but at the carrier, path, and provider level. SD-WAN ties the mix together, steering traffic to the best available path in real time.
Match the design to the business
A trading firm, a hospital, and a manufacturer have very different tolerance for downtime and latency. The right connectivity design starts from those requirements and works backward to the transport mix — not the other way around.
If your “redundancy” hasn’t been independently validated, it’s worth a look before the next outage validates it for you.