[GLLUG] Emergency Internet connection may be needed tomorrow?

[Clay Dowling]

Jeff Lawton wrote:
> Obviously your organization relies on bandwidth. With the price of DSL
> these days I would recommend a second connection even if they have
> something reliable. You could use it throughout the day for an access
> point, but in case of an emergency you can easily switch over to it. It
> may not be as fast or work as well, but it is better than being dead in
> the water. I've suggested this to several companies like insurance firms
> who really rely on internet and it seems to work rather well for them.
> It is also more cost effect because more than likely if there is a
> service that will do an emergency connection like that they will be a
> little more expensive in order to rush it, so having a backup may even
> be cheaper. Also, in some cases, depending on who you get your DSL
> through, you can keep the entry level package all the time, and if you
> had to the circuit is there, and you could drastically pump up the
> bandwidth, upload and download, to accomodate the needs of the customer.
> When they are back in normal operation, we can back it down, and just
> charge them for that month of higher rater.

If this is coupled with something like CARP from OpenBSD the DSL line
could act as a hot backup, automatically kicking in whenever something
bad happened to the main link.  A lot of firms have been slipping
OpenBSD silently into their firewalls to take advantage of this.

I haven't set it up myself, but I'd be glad to give a hand if it's
something you'd like to look into.

Clay Dowling
-- 
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