Why is my leased line fibre down?
Posted on 2 September 2021 by Beaming SupportCan a leased line break?
Most of us have at one time or another experienced a problem with our home broadband that’s made the connection unreliable or even stop working for a period of time, so if you’re planning to invest in a fibre leased line for your business it’s understandable that you’d be questioning whether a fibre leased line is more reliable.
Some of your questions can be answered by learning a bit more about the technologies behind broadband and fibre leased lines. This article explains the differences between broadband and fibre, including why leased lines are overall more reliable and will be fixed much more quickly in the case of a fault.
Being a direct and dedicated connection, a leased line fibre has fewer potential points of failure and is therefore more reliable than a broadband connection. Fibre faults are rare but they do happen. Here we’ll explain why a leased line may stop working, slow down or become unreliable.
Fibre leased line is down and not working at all
Fibre optic cable is actually more fragile and less pliable than the copper wire used in older broadband, but it has the big advantage of being able to transmit data at the speed of light. While it is encased within many protective layers before being buried deep in the ground – or, sometimes, delivered through overhead cabling – if your connection has completely stopped working this is most likely down to the fibre being damaged. This could be caused by roadworks accidentally cutting through the cable, a fire affecting the fibre node, or there have even been occasions where fibre tubing has been mistaken for copper by thieves.
Power failures can also cause your fibre leased line connection to go down. Your internet service provider uses a variety of equipment to keep its network up and running, but if power is lost to that equipment your connection could suffer. This could again be caused by an accident or bad weather. A specialist business provider like Beaming has in place many backups and failovers to ensure that only the most extreme (and therefore unlikely) power failures would cause an outage of your fibre connection.
Though accidents or interventions by nature might not always be preventable, the important thing is that you’re confident your fibre will be quickly fixed if the worst should happen. Your provider can explain what the service level agreement (SLA) is for fault repairs, and should prioritise the repair of leased lines by proactively monitoring for problems and taking action as soon as one is detected. For example, fibre lease lines from Beaming have a 5-hour repair target, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
If your leased line isn’t working on the day of activation, this could be down to a hardware misconfiguration, and you should contact your internet service provider straight away to report the issue.
Fibre leased line is unreliable or slower than expected
This is a rare problem, because leased lines are designed to always provide the speed that’s been agreed with the provider and include fewer points of failure to ensure maximum reliability.
That said, an unreliable leased line may be due to physical problems with parts of the network, such as poor quality or even dirty connectors. Otherwise, it can be down to the provider’s network design, depending on how resilient it has been made to be.
While the technology at the core of a fibre leased line is not immune to faults, the way in which it is used within the network and the procedures your ISP has in place to rectify problems should be appropriate for a business-grade product. When staying online is imperative for your business, you can work with your provider to add further resilience to your connection by using diversely routed fibre or by adding a broadband backup.
To speak to Beaming’s tech experts about our fibre leased lines, which come with project-managed installation and 5-hour repair targets 365 days a year, call us on 0800 082 2868 or fill in the form below.
