It can be pretty frustrating when you’re working with large data files but it’s taking forever to transfer them to your Cloud. Let’s face it, the Cloud is here to stay and with the introduction of the Internet of Things, it will become an even more powerful tool for businesses and consumers. But low Internet speeds can make it a pain to use.
Although, there are ways to improve your connection and make high network latency a thing of the past by setting up a Dedicated Connection.
So what are Dedicated Connections?
What’s unique about Dedicated Connections is that they don’t use standard public Internet connections due to the potential for things to go wrong, such as poor connectivity.
Instead, Dedicated Connections consist of private, direct connections from your organization’s infrastructure to your cloud provider’s Point of Presence (PoP) i.e. colocation centres.
Similarly, TechRepublic describes dedicated connections as an “extension of the customer’s private infrastructure to the cloud-provider’s network”.
One way that this private connection can be established is through leased lines, which allows a unique connection between multiple locations often through a leased fibre connection.
A cool thing about the private connection is that it affords a higher level of security compared to public Internet connections.
This means that when you’re transferring sensitive data to and from the cloud, access to your data from unwanted parties is less likely to occur.
Ultimately, Dedicated Connections provide a more secure and isolated connection to your cloud provider that avoids the drawbacks of public Internet connections, including high network latency and security breaches.
Improving your Cloud experience with Dedicated Connection
1) Speed
The beauty of using Dedicated Connections means that you get bandwidth all to yourself.
Essentially, as you are the only one using your bandwidth, this increases the speed of data transfer and helps to solve the problem of high network latency.
What’s more, a Dedicated Connection can provide up to 10,000 Mbps when transferring data. This is significantly more than a standard ADSL connection, which can transfer data at about 8Mbps.
2) Flexibility
Similar to how Cloud servers can be scaled, your bandwidth can also be scaled according to organizational demands – the developers equivalent of a custom paint job.
So where you have large data files to transfer to the Cloud, your bandwidth is scaled up. Equally where smaller files are concerned, bandwidth can be scaled down.
3) Reliability
A private connection also ensures that you as the customer enjoy a better experience through a more stable and predictable connection to your Cloud servers.
This was highlighted by Malik Zegdi, CTO & EVP of Business Development at Innova, in an article by TechTarget;
“You have a line that carries only your traffic, so you know how long it takes to transfer a terabyte of data. If the Internet has bad day, guess what? It’s going to take a long time, but when you have a direct connection it’s predictable.”
Reliability of Dedicated Connections can also be assured through an SLA (Service Level Agreement) which essentially guarantees you network availability, server availability etc. with a degree of certainty.
This may be around the 99.95% to 99.99% range, taking into account scheduled maintenance works, giving you peace of mind knowing that access to your Cloud servers is pretty much certain.
Overall, Dedicated Connections ensure that you as the user have a better and faster Cloud experience by providing stable and secure connections to your Cloud provider.
As a developer, you might battle with Internet speeds on a day-to-day basis; switching the router on/off, using a hard-wired connection instead of WiFi and maybe even trying to just figure out the best time of the day to use the Internet for large uploads. A Dedicated Connection would effectively help you resolve some of these issues and make the Cloud work as seamlessly as you think it should.
It’s certainly something you might want to consider!
