First may I wish a happy and a prosperous 2010 to everyone... 2010; the year when companies that have survived the onslaught of recession will be looking to become stronger and to do so will strive to reduce any operational costs even further.
Is broadband one of those potential savings? Well the broadband companies claim so, but will it save your company money or will it cost you?
Here’s what you need to look out for:
Types of Broadband (Ireland):
In Ireland there are 2 primary means of supplying broadband to a premises; DSL and Wireless – which usually present themselves in your office COMs room as phone Line or Ethernet respectively.
The question you must ask here is “Will my existing equipment support the new connection type?” – the prospective supplier will offer you free equipment to support the new connection, but will it support any features you may have setup e.g. email, content filter, on-line backups, remote access, remote support, CCTV ?
And if it does, who is going to configure it for you and what will they charge?
IP Addressing:
Changing providers will inevitably result in a new pool of IP addresses being assigned to your router. The IP address can be seen as a modern day phone number for your computer network. If you have a remote office, remote users (sales reps), work from home, centrally managed email e.g. MS Exchange, CCTV, VoIP connections etc. a newly assigned IP address will result in all these features requiring to be reconfigured. This is time consuming and costly not to mention the downtime during the changeover.
Email Relaying/DNS:
While this topic is usually less severe and less common than the above, it should still be considered when making the change. Changing broadband provider in Ireland may also require local computer settings to change if you are relaying mail out through the original providers SMTP server, or if your DNS is pointed at the previous providers your internet may not work.
Internal IP Addressing
Your network has an internal IP range typically 192.168.1.x, where the first 3 parts of the address specify the network address and the x refers to your individual computers address in the range. Some broadband providers are shipping broadband routers (modems) with the address 192.168.1.1 which in a lot of cases can be the IP address of your network server. This will cause an IP conflict on your network which will disconnect the computers from your server.
Final Thoughts:
While it is possible to make a saving by swapping broadband providers, the cost of changing should be considered before doing so. My advice would be to plan it and to discuss it with your IT providers to see the exact costs involved in preparing for a minimum downtime changeover.
