Leased Lines - In Depth Details
A great analogy for anyone who is non technical:
Think of the internet as a motorway – everyone needs to use it at some point to get from A to B. If you drive on the motorway, sometimes there can be traffic jams, where multiple users are using the road at the same time. In this analogy the traffic jam is known as contention. If standard broadband is the public highway, a leased line is a private toll road. It provides guaranteed speeds because there is no other traffic, or in networking speak, it is uncontended.
By running a direct, dedicated, uncontended private line from your internet service provider (ISP) to your business premises, you get guaranteed bandwidth, guaranteed speeds and exclusive use of the connection, all assured by clear SLAs marked out within your Connectivity Contract should the line experience issues.
Another feature of a leased line is that it shares bandwidth equally between uploads and downloads, meaning you get consistent speeds across both. This is known as a symmetrical or synchronous connection. This is not what you get with standard broadband – the internet connection you get in your home is asymmetrical, meaning it allocates more bandwidth to downloads than to uploads, as generally we spend more of our time downloading e.g. films and music rather than uploading .e.g photos to the cloud.
Any cloud-based productivity platform or business software depends on users being able to upload data as they work, as much as it does on downloading data, which is where leased lines provide the required balance.
Who needs a Leased Line?
- Businesses with a large office space with many staff
- Businesses that are linking to other office locations or databases
- Businesses that large-scale website/s
- Use of online services such as Office/ Nextcloud etc
- Businesses that need ongoing internet connectivity for many people at once
- Buisnesses that require frequent use of phones (VoIP)
- Businesses that transfer large files and amounts of data on a regular basis.
Plus Points for Sales:
Higher Speeds - Faster Uploads and Downloads.
Higher Security - Dedicated Line = not exposed to the same risks as regular broadband connections
Symetrical connection.
Tighter SLAs in fixing and downtime vs FTTP (they tend to offer 99% uptime)
Futureproofing business expansion or change management
Con Points to be Aware of:
Higher costs vs standard Fibe Connections
Limited availability in areas
Longer Lead times for Set up - 90 Days
NOT guaranteed for permanent 247 connection as laid out in SLA's. Higher priority from the ISP to rectify any faults. Tranquil IT's dedicated Leased Line has only experienced down time twice in 7 years - one was due to a fault at a national level from the provider. The second instance was a utilities company had cut through lines whilst working on a main road. Sometimes these issues do occur, hence no full guarantee.