It’s well known that fiber lines are fast, but what about reliability? Whether you’re working from home or have an office network, you need 100% uptime. As Murphy’s Law states, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong (at the worst possible moment). Can fiber beat Murphy’s Law?
Unfortunately, it can’t. Fiber cables are made of glass and cannot be stretched without cracking. To mitigate this, fiber makers often “proof” their product by subjecting it to a brief pull test before leaving the factory. However, what happens after the cable leaves the factory is beyond the makers’ control.
Fiber Breaks
Fiber spools can get dropped, introducing cracks in the cable. During installation, wire stripping tools can scratch the glass and heavy machinery may apply pressure. The problem is that installation teams can’t tell whether a fiber cable has been damaged. This leads to compromised fiber lines being installed and passing partial signal if not outright breaking. When it comes to fiber lines, IT veteran Greg Ferro said it best “Damaged is Worse Than Broken”.
Like copper, fiber connections are physical lines that can be accidentally dug up, frozen, melted, chewed on, or even get struck by lightning via trees. In one study from fiber manufacturer Alcoa Fujikura, dig-ups account for 80% of fiber line failures. In fact, 14% of the accidental dig-ups are done by the network providers themselves, with the rest from infrastructure work or from someone who just wanted to add a pool to his backyard or scavenge for metals.
SpeedFusion to the Rescue
Whether the fiber cable was compromised before or after installation, it takes an average of 13.8 hours to restore connectivity. While most users can fall back to a cellular connection, their calls will break during the switch. In addition, unreliable cellular coverage can make calls choppy, and data throttling puts your network on borrowed time.
With SpeedFusion, users can stream uninterrupted. This technology combines the bandwidth and reliability of multiple connections (cellular in this case). As demonstrated here, users won’t even notice a difference when any line goes down.
Beat Murphy’s law with SpeedFusion technology.