Components of Reliable Connectivity

As noted in the introduction, reliable connectivity consists of much more than a reliable circuit from an ISP. Depending on your network and Internet gateway architecture, the following general categories may impact your connectivity to the Internet:

• Device configuration backups

• ISP/organizational routing configuration and policy

• Limited bandwidth

• Geographical/topological diversity of critical application servers (DNS, e-mail, and so on)

• Layer-2 switches interconnecting gateway equipment

• Spare router, switch, and/or interface cards