In the digital age, most modern organisations rely heavily on stable and fast internet connections to support their business operations. One of the more prominent connectivity options available at the moment is dedicated internet access (DIA). But what is dedicated internet access?
In this blog, we’ll answer this question, explaining the concept of DIA, its benefits, and why it might be the ideal solution for your business. As one of the UK’s leading connectivity and cloud services partners, M247 is perfectly primed to teach you all about dedicated internet access and how it can benefit your business.
If you’d like to find out more about our range of connectivity options, please get in touch here.
Dedicated Internet Access: What Exactly Is It?
The term ‘dedicated internet access’ refers to a type of internet service that provides an organisation with an exclusive and dedicated connection to the internet. In most cases, an uncontended connection like DIA is preferable to shared internet access, which can suffer from congestion and fluctuating speeds due to the number of users using the connection.
Instead, DIA provides a constant and guaranteed bandwidth, ensuring you will always have access to high download and upload speeds. This also means that the internet speed you pay for is always available to you – regardless of the time of day or the number of users online at any given time.
Speeds of up to 10Gbps are available through our 10Gbps internet leased lines, but we also have other options available, including our 100Mbps and 1Gbps leased lines.
How Does Dedicated Internet Access Work?
In most cases, business dedicated internet access is delivered to your business premises using ethernet and fibre optic cables, giving you symmetric upload and download speeds that are fixed as long as you’re using the line. Fibre optic cables are preferable, as they are more reliable and offer a superior speed when compared to conventional copper lines. This is because fibre lines can sustain higher bandwidths over greater distances.
Your internet service provider will run a direct business leased line to your business’s local area network (LAN) or your wide area network (WAN). Dedicated internet access usually works through a circuit, carrying your internet services to your business. These circuits are physical, wired paths that transfer your internet connection every time you upload or download data.
Using DIA ensures that your data traffic will not have to compete with other users, providing a more consistent and high-speed network performance.
Is Dedicated Internet Access Suitable for My Business?
Before deciding whether dedicated internet access is right for your business, there are a number of things that need to be considered, including:
- Any other types of internet connections available
- Your current bandwidth needs
- Whether your bandwidth needs are predicted to change in the future
- Your desired data transfer speeds
- Your business requirements
- The budget you’ve set aside for your business broadband
Your network performance can be affected by multiple factors, but your bandwidth is one of the most important things to take into account. Essentially, your bandwidth measures the amount of data that can pass through your network in a fixed period of time. For organisations that rely on a large amount of bandwidth, choosing a gigabit internet connection could be the ideal choice for your needs.
More bandwidth will be required if you have additional devices actively connected to your network, so it’s worth assessing your future needs too.
You should ask yourself the following questions:
- How many employees do you have? Is this subject to change in the near future?
- How many connected devices and active workstations do you have?
- Which applications are used on each connected device?
If you have more than ten employees, work in a data-critical industry, or regularly rely on cloud services and solutions for your day-to-day business operations, dedicated internet connectivity could be ideal for your business.
If you’re not sure what your bandwidth requirements are, please get in touch with our expert team and we’ll be happy to help.
Why Should I Use Dedicated Internet Access for My Business Internet?
At M247, we believe that a dedicated internet connection is the perfect connectivity solution for most modern businesses, offering a range of advantages over shared internet connections.
Let’s take a look at some of the main business benefits that dedicated leased lines can provide for you…
Consistent Performance and Reliability
As a business, consistent performance and reliability are crucial. If your network or website keeps lagging or your upload and download speeds aren’t fast enough, this may push customers towards your rivals instead.
However, with DIA, you’ll always be guaranteed consistent performance. By having your own dedicated bandwidth and direct internet connection, you can ensure you have steady internet speeds for all your business critical operations. This may be a particularly useful factor for companies requiring large data transfers, or those who use cloud computing features a lot.
Remote and hybrid working has become more and more popular of late, so a dedicated internet connection can also make video conferencing and other forms of communicating much easier, preventing disruptions and enhancing your overall productivity.
Most dedicated internet service providers will also have their own SLAs (service level agreements) built into their contract, giving you confidence about using their DIA. At M247, for example, we have a guaranteed 99.95% SLA built into our terms and conditions, ensuring your fibre ethernet connection will work at top speed for the vast majority of the time.
A High-Speed Solution for Modern Businesses
The main difference between dedicated and shared internet access lies in its speed. Shared connections can have network slowdowns during peak usage times, in which your bandwidth is divided between multiple users. With direct internet access, your business only uses your connection and so your bandwidth is always guaranteed – regardless of network congestion.
Unlike shared fibre broadband connections, you’ll get guaranteed download and upload speeds with no fluctuations, ensuring a fast, low latency connection for your business operations. The lower the latency, the less time it takes to send a unit of data through a network, benefitting your organisation greatly.
Another point to consider is that typical broadband connections are asymmetrical, which means that the download speed is significantly faster than the upload speed. However, when using our dedicated internet access services, you’ll instead get a fibre internet line that offers symmetrical uploading and downloading, enhancing your overall connectivity. This may be particularly beneficial for larger businesses working across multiple locations.
Enhanced Security and Support
Cyber security is a common concern for modern businesses, as the risk of threat actors and data breaches rises. Dedicated internet access offers greater security when compared to shared internet connections. This is because your connection can only be accessed by your organisation, making the risk of unauthorised access and data breaches much lower.
Good ISPs will also offer advanced security features as part of the package, including managed firewall services and DDoS protection, amongst other measures.
At M247, you’ll always get secure internet access when using our DIA, regardless of whether you opt for a wireless leased line or a more traditional wired connection. Diverse circuits can also be ordered and created for important business sites, protecting your company on the off-chance that a fibre break occurs.
Dedicated internet access connections usually come with superior customer support options (when compared to conventional business shared lines), as well as the SLAs previously touched upon. This is also true for M247 – we offer a 24/7 support service with rapid response times, able to address any issues as and when they crop up. Naturally, this means that you can expect minimal downtime, keeping your business running smoothly throughout.
Dedicated Internet Access: The Bottom Line
We hope that now we’ve answered the question of ‘What is dedicated internet access?’, giving you all the information required to make an informed decision for your needs.
As you can see, there are many benefits to integrating dedicated internet access into your organisation. DIA offers modern businesses a reliable and high-performance internet solution that promises both consistent speeds, enhanced security, and secure internet access.
DIA can be crucial for organisations with stringent security requirements and high data demands, providing a reliable connection for all members of your team.
If you’d like to get started with our business dedicated internet access, please get in touch with the team here.
